The following tips for holding productive meetings come from former colleagues and from attending good and bad meetings. Remember meetings go beyond businesses. Volunteers and families hold meetings.
- Do occasional check-ups on regularly-scheduled meetings to ensure they still have value: A meeting scheduled daily, weekly, bi-weekly can slowly move away from its original purpose. Eventually, it may not be needed or needs to get back on track.
- Table long discussions for later: If a topic takes longer than expected, ask those involved to talk later or set up another meeting for that topic.
- Use facilitators whenever possible. They ensure the meeting stays on track, meets its goals, and ends with clear action items. For team meetings, have employees take turns as facilitators. It helps develop employees’ meeting management skills.
- End meetings with an action: This ultimate tip comes from Behance. If you take away one tip, then it’s end meetings with an action.
The meeting agenda. Good or bad?
- Keeps the meeting on track.
- Doesn’t consider unexpected issues or important topics taking more time.
- Wastes paper (even if you e-mail them, people will print them — not everyone relies on handhelds and smartphones for carrying information.).
What’s your take on agendas? Any other effective meeting tips?
A meeting without an agenda is a chat. Agenda’s keep people focused, on task, and make clear the purpose. A skilled facilitator can incorporate late breaking issues and still end the meeting at the agreed time.
Good point, Andy. I do have a weekly meeting that never has an agenda and it rarely goes past 20 minutes. But in this meeting, we simply discuss the work progress for four clients working through each one. Sometimes, if we have something we need to discuss — we’ll let each other know by email before the meeting.