10 Steps to Meetings Mastery

Here’s a statistic that may make your eyelids heavy: there are 55 million meetings held each week in the United States, and most employees attend at least 8 of them.

Sure, meetings are a part of business (and they’ve increased by almost 13% since the pandemic began), but there are very few people who would say that meetings are their favorite part of business. That’s because the vast majority of meetings - whether virtual or in-person - can feel like overkill at best and a major time suck at worst.

A successful meeting is all in the facilitation, so if you’re someone who frequently puts time on employee and colleague calendars, these 10 tips will help ensure you’re doing it right.

1) Ensure it’s a Meeting

A good meeting for the right reasons is important. But we all know the pain of sitting in a meeting without a clear purpose, or that has such a straightforward purpose that the information conveyed could have been shared via email. Really think about the “why” of your meeting before you send that invite and if you’re sure it needs to be one…

2) Invite Right

(Effective) meetings are almost never just to convey straightforward information (see tip #1), so make sure you’re inviting people who truly need to be there to share perspectives on the issue. The ideal meeting size is 3 - 8 participants. Any more than that and you’re in presentation territory…which is fine, by the way, but be clear with yourself and attendees if that’s the case.

3) Turn Objectives into Questions

While this doesn’t work in 100% of cases, it can often be effective to shift away from setting a meeting objective, and instead positing a question that the group needs to answer. This can increase engagement and often focuses conversation.

4) Prepare Your Points

Good meetings have an agenda, yes, but it’s a rookie mistake to stop there in your planning. Don’t walk (or Zoom) into a meeting without being super clear on what you want to say and where you want to gather input. Then, write them down! This will focus you as a facilitator.

5) Set Norms

This one is especially important for virtual meetings where people may choose to be off camera (almost always leading to less engagement) or get easily distracted. Establishing expectations for the time you’re together helps sharpen your focus. (Side note: Regularly meeting with the same group? Establish norms once and utilize them again and again.)

6) Listen (REALLY Listen)

Are you listening to participants to authentically gain their insight? Or are you nodding along and preparing your next point? If it’s the latter, people can tell. Engagement drops dramatically when people don’t feel as if they are being authentically heard so keep your ears in the game.

7) Guide Participants

We could write an entire article about this one - it’s the meat of your meeting. You want to ensure you’re not taking too many detours along the way to your end goal. If you or another participant introduces a tangential thought, say so, and guide the group back to the meeting objectives or questions.

8) Stop When You’re Done

If you’re in a position where you’re often leading meetings it’s probably because you’re the type of person who enjoys talking. There’s nothing wrong with this! But don’t get caught up in restating your point “in another way,” or in listening to the voice that tells you your participants are not with you. They very likely are - trust yourself.

9) End with a Call to Action

To hit home how much this meeting definitely needed to be a meeting, end with clear action steps for participants. (Secret bonus tip: If it’s your meeting, most of the action should be on others!)

10) Don’t Forget Feedback

Put a bow on your amazing meeting by finding out if it was, in fact, amazing. Participants will appreciate the chance to share what went well and what could have been stronger (seriously) and it will make you better next time.

Need help managing your meetings? Or do people on your team? Agile Talent provides new manager and team training on the art of facilitating effective meetings - we’re here to help you stop your meeting madness.