Meetings have a terrible connotation. COVID-19 and endless Zoom calls with huge groups of people who have zero teleconference etiquette have only solidified a belief we’ve held long before this pandemic hit home: meetings suck and they are often a waste of time.
Here’s just a glimpse of what the past couple of months have been like:
“You’re muted. We can’t hear you.”
“We’re getting a lot of background noise from your end — can you go on mute?”
*Dog barks in the background*
*Tiles on the screen are too small to recognize any one of the 30 people on the call*
“You’re breaking up; can you say that again?”
Did your blood pressure just go up? Do you feel the hatred erupting inside of you? Ours did. So why, for the love of corn, do we subject ourselves to this kind of torture?
The simple answer? Meetings can have a useful purpose. We easily lose sight of that when said meetings are poorly planned and/or executed. Here are some tips on how to have meetings that don’t suck.
Ask yourself the all-important question
You will make or break your meeting if you neglect to ask yourself this question early on: Can this meeting be an email?
If the answer is yes, then great! Spare everybody the time and headaches and type away.
If the answer is no, then bummer. Proceed to the next section.
Make sure everyone knows what type of meeting it is
There are only two types of meetings:
Information dissemination
Collaborative
Think about the type of meeting you need to have and let everyone know. This will help everyone get in the right mindset.
If your meeting is designed to be informational, once again ask yourself if this meeting can be replaced by an email. If you schedule one because you like to hear yourself talk, everyone will walk out of the meeting thinking you’re an idiot. And they’d be right. Just send the email.
Also keep in mind that not everybody needs to be at the informational meeting. Inviting everybody under the sun will once again gain you entry into the Idiot Hotel. Determine who actually needs to be there, and then provide meeting minutes (that they will never read) to those who don’t.
If the meeting is a collaborative one, then the list of attendees better not be more than 10 people. I would even venture to say even a 10-person meeting is already pushing it. If you think more than 10 people can have a productive discussion in a reasonable amount of time then I would like to talk to you about a great opportunity to invest in my company that is making screen doors for submarines.
Have an objective and an intended outcome of the meeting and state them upfront
This one is pretty straightforward but is often overlooked. It’s very simple and only involves one sentence. It goes something like this: The purpose of this meeting is… .and by the end of this meeting I want…
Invite only those that are absolutely necessary to achieve the objective of the meeting
We already covered this, but it deserves its own section. This is relevant to collaboration type meetings. Everyone in the meeting should have valuable input. If you invite people that don’t have anything to say, then they don’t need to be there.
Let me be very clear about the reality of meetings. For most people, this means they will have to stop what they are doing to attend your meeting. After the meeting they will have to pick up where they left off. This stop-and-start drill is very expensive in terms of efficiency. Just know, if you invite someone to a meeting it better be worth their time.
Business up front and party in the back
Yes, you read that subhead correctly. Conduct your meeting the right way and it will be glorious… just like a healthy mullet.
Start on time and get right to business. Try to get done early and save the chit chat for the end. This way it’s entirely optional for people to stick around to hear about the sweater you bought for your cat.
Be a good facilitator
If you called the meeting, this is most likely your job. There are some exceptions to this but let’s not get distracted. If you don’t know how to facilitate a meeting, it’s time to learn.
This is only relevant to a collaborative-type meeting. For informational meetings, all you need to do is mute everybody else and start rambling into the mic.
For collaborative meetings, your goal is to make sure the meeting is moving towards the objective. If someone starts to drift, you’ve gotta shut them down and get them back on the tracks. If you’ve got somebody Boggarting the mic, then politely cut them off and make room for other people’s input.
Your meeting is not a platform for people to pontificate about stupid crap. Stay on target and get it done!
There you have it: How to have a meeting that is a little less sucky. Have you been a victim of terrible meetings? Tell us your story in the comments below.
