Get Yourself Ready for Meetings

As a leader, do you use the 3 key steps for preparation? 


With so many meetings, busy leaders don't always have time to think about the goals of those meetings. But showing up unprepared only makes a meeting longer and less effective. Try blocking out time on your calendar for prep work and to think about what you want to accomplish. If a meeting is an hour, you may need 30 minutes to prepare. For critical meetings you may need much more time. If you plan accordingly, you'll arrive ready to accomplish what you've set out to do, not catching up.


Three key steps for preparation...

1. Establish a clear purpose for the meeting and be sure everyone knows it.
2. Uses processes for engaging participants.  Avoid talking at them. 
3. Be sure to include everyone who needs to know. 

Adapted from "Make Time for Time" by Anthony K. Tjan.

Leading Decisive Meetings

As a leader, do you know how to lead a decisive meeting? 

Simply because someone is appointed to a leadership position, it doesn't mean that they automatically know how to lead effective meetings.  To keep momentum in your work, you need to run great meetings. Make your next meeting productive with these three guidelines:

• Restate the meeting's purpose. Even if you think everyone knows it, it helps to remind them and sharpen the group's focus.
• Include everyone. If one or two people dominate the conversation and others are shy about leaping in, draw out people through facilitating by saying, "Thanks for those ideas, Carl. What are your thoughts about this problem, Megan?"
• End well. Close the meeting with specific actions to take and a clear time frame. State the decisions the group has made, who owns what, and when they need to report back to the team. 

Adapted from Guide to Project Management (HBR OnPoint Collection).

Planning Strategically for Meetings

As a leader, are you planning strategically for your meetings?

From the moment you send a meeting invite, as the meeting organizer you are responsible for setting the right tone and making the meeting a success. Here are three things you should do before people get in the room:

• Clarify the objective. Make sure people know why they're invited. If it's to make a decision, give participants the time and materials they need to prepare.
• Prep important people. Talk with key participants about agenda items ahead of time. You may hear insights that could change how you run the meeting.
• Include everyone who needs to be there.  Think carefully about who needs to be there.  Who truly cares about the topics?  Who has valuable knowledge insights?  Who might bring valuable divergent thinking to the group?
• Expect full participation. Ask attendees to do their homework, come with relevant materials, and show up ready to contribute.

Adapted from Guide to Project Management (HBR OnPoint Collection).

Using Clear, Precise Language

As a leader, are you using clear, precise language.....or filler?

Meaningless phrases, such as "To be honest" and "Like I said," or euphemisms often creep up in meetings and presentations. Using these expressions undermines your credibility. Try replacing this filler language with meaning by doing the following:

• Switch from conditional to declarative. Couching statements with phrases like "I believe" or "We think" weakens your argument. Strengthen your points by cutting to the chase. If you must use the conditional, try the stronger "We're confident" or "We expect."
• Be positive. Negative statements sound defensive and fail to provide information. Instead of saying "What we're not is…" tell your audience exactly what you are.
• Lose the euphemisms.  Use clear, precise language that means something to participants.  Euphemisms suggest that you're unsure or you're hedging.   

Adapted from "Replace Meaningless Words with Meaningful Ones" by Jerry Weissman.

Ensuring Better Attendance at Meetings

As a leader, how might you ensure better attendance at meetings?

No matter how well you've prepared your meeting, things will go wrong. One of the more common disruptions is attendees showing up late. If people belatedly walk in, try these three things:

• Don't recap. Resist the temptation to catch up latecomers. Keep moving forward. You can update them afterward.
• Assign a job. If you sense someone might be late, give her something to do during the meeting. If she has a job, she's more likely to show up on time.
• Walk him there. Physically help a chronic latecomer get to the meeting. Stop by his desk at the appointed time and ask if you can walk together.  It's the courteous and respectful way to do it.

Adapted from Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter.



Saving a Meeting that's Going Nowhere

As a leader, how do you save a meeting that's quickly sinking?

We've all been stuck in long meetings that bounce aimlessly from one topic to the next. Instead of rolling your eyes, take control. Without bulldozing others, be brave enough to propose a solution:

• Play dumb. Ask someone in the room—preferably the strongest communicator—to help you understand what problem you're trying to solve and what needs to happen to resolve it.  This is helping the group get to the purpose.
• Identify the decision-maker. Sometimes meetings stall because no one knows who is responsible for the decision or what the decision-making process is. Ask who that is and inquire about what the decision-making process will be.  This helps get process to the surface.
• Get the right people in the room. Are there absentees who need to be there? Suggest rescheduling for a time when all the stakeholders can be present.  This ensures inclusion and that the best thinking will be available for the group.

Adapted from Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter (HBR OnPoint Collection).

Leading Effective Meetings

As a leader, how do you ensure purpose in your meetings?

As leaders, we generally have the positional authority to call meetings when we wish.  This has obvious advantages but it also has significant potential risks for you as a leader.  If your meetings are purposeful and engaging, you run the risk of dooming all meetings to events your staff members learn to dread.

Here are four simple ideas to ensure effective meetings:

• Have a clear purpose.  Be sure that each meeting has a clear purpose and that everyone attending knows the purpose in advance.  People who attend can come prepared.  If your purpose is clear, your outcomes will be more readily accomplished.
• Ensure everyone who needs to be there is present.  Be sure that everyone who needs to know - or wants to know - is included.  If the meeting is worth calling, it's worth having all valuable perspectives present in the room.  It's annoying and ineffective when you find you need someone there and they weren't even invited.
• Operate by pre-determined norms.  Establish clear, easy-to-follow norms and stick by them.  People appreciate how norms focus meetings and get the work done in a timely manner.
• Use facilitation strategies. A well-facilitated meeting engages the participants and it accomplishes the outcomes desired.  Without facilitation, the meeting can go on and on while its trying to find a focus.  What usually ends up happening is that one person takes over and it becomes their meeting and you lose the value of those who are present. 

Meetings - Cutting the time in half

As a leader, how do you regulate the amount of time for meetings in order to be efficient?

People often set meetings for an hour because their calendars default to that time period. But you may need far less time to accomplish your work. Try these three measures to shorten your meeting: Stand up. Most people won't linger on an issue if their feet hurt. Remove chairs from the room. When standing, people are often more attentive and engaged. Use a timer. Designate an allotted time for each agenda item and set a stopwatch or the timer on your phone. Or make it more personal and have one of the members of your group do the timing. When time is up, determine next steps and move on. Show the cost of the meeting. At the top of the agenda, show the calculated hourly cost of having the group together. When people realize how much a meeting costs the school/organization, they are more apt to be efficient.

Adapted from: Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter

Staff Meetings

As a leader, are all your meetings purposeful?  If not, why do you have them?

Recurring meetings are a drag. These regular updates exist for a reason, but they are often boring and even unproductive. Here are three ways you can freshen up your staff meetings:

• Review the meeting's purpose. People may show up just because it's on their calendar. Remind them why the meeting exists and ask if it still serves a purpose.
• Solicit agenda items in advance. Give attendees the chance to bring up issues that are of interest to them.
• Cancel if there is no reason to meet. No agenda items? Cancel. People will respect that you aren't wasting their time and will show up engaged when there is work to be done and value in meeting.

Adapted from Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter by Ron Ashkenas, Martha Craumer, Anthony K. Tjan, Gina Trapani, David Silverman, Jane Heifetz, June Delano, Jodi Glickman, Melissa Raffoni

Leading Meetings

As a leader, how do you lead open, honest, productive meetings?

Meetings without outcomes are a waste of time. Yet, many meetings fail to produce results because the conversation circles around the issues rather than focusing on them. To make sure decisions happen and people take action, you need to have a productive dialogue. Here are five things every meeting
should be:

1. Open. The outcomes of your meeting should not be predetermined. Questions like, "What are we missing?", "Who else needs to be here?", "What voices are not represented at this table?" signal honest searching for a range of perspectives and more broad-based thinking.
2. Candid. Encourage people to air conflicts. When people express their real opinions, productivity increases.  A quick 'go round' of the table to ask "What;s working for you and what isn't?" can help surface issues that need to be tabled. 
3. Informal. Keep it loose. Conversations should be unscripted with honest questions and spontaneity...yet with meeting processes in place so that it's not unending.  This in itself takes lots of practice as the leader of meetings.
4. Conclusive. Everyone should leave knowing exactly what they are expected to do.  A quick check-in helps.  Again, a quick 'go round' of the table to ask, "What's your action coming out of our meeting?" helps solidify the actions and confirms that the meeting had purpose. 
5. Reflective - a few days after the meeting, check in with a few people to ask how it went.  Are meetings helping us accomplish what we want to accomplish?  Being sincere in seeking this input helps staff know that you're serious about their opinions and that you value both their opinions and their work.  

Adapted from Harvard Business Review on Making Smart Decisions.