Stop Wasting Everyone’s Time: The 4 Golden Rules of Effective Meetings
In order to lead people, you need to learn how to communicate effectively.
When I first got into a managing role, nobody taught me beforehand how to set up a structured meeting culture, so I read a lot and adopted meeting styles I saw working from other people and mentors.
In this article, I will teach you 4 basic principles I wish I knew when I first started out that, when followed, will 10x the productivity of your meetings.
1. Necessity: Does This Have to Be a Meeting?
Before even setting up a meeting, ask yourself, “Could this be a phone call or an email?”
Go even further and find out if this is something that needs to be synchronous communication, meaning “live,” or is it sufficient just to record yourself in a small video, maybe with your screen, and send it out to your team so they can watch it at 2x speed? (Loom is a great app for that.)
Try not to waste anyone’s time.
Also, remember: Just because you have a busy schedule doesn’t mean you’re actually getting stuff done.
2. Purpose: Define a Goal
Okay, so it has to be a meeting. Then let’s be precise about it.
How often do you attend meetings that don’t have any outcome? All of you are just sitting in a room, discussing, and then after an hour or more you leave, feeling empty because you essentially just wasted your time without achieving anything. Sounds familiar? Chances are that there was no clear goal or theme defined before the meeting. That’s why meetings, in general, have such a bad rep.
First of all, don’t set any meetings if you don’t know what you want to get out of them; I think this goes without saying. But if you need a meeting, define the goal in the name of the invitation.
Is it a Decision-Making Meeting (where something needs to be decided upon), is it a Work Meeting (where you want to work with others on a specific task), or is it an Update Meeting (where you want to get a status on a specific task or project)? The latter should be by far the shortest meetings you conduct.
An example of an effective subject line could be “[Decision] Salary Increase 2024” or “[Work] Presentation Board Meeting August 2024.”
3. Clarity: Set an Agenda and Breaks
This is crucial to keep the desired timeframe. Set a clear agenda with times, so everybody knows what topics will be discussed at the meeting. This gives your team time to prepare beforehand and nobody will be surprised.
Be rigorous in keeping the times; let’s say you’ve reserved 10 minutes for Topic X. Cut it after 10 minutes, note the status if you’re not finished, and set a follow-up to continue. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it’s okay to defer topics.
There is also a feature in Outlook to end a time slot some minutes earlier than originally defined. So, let’s say you set a meeting from 10:00 to 10:30, it will automatically be set from 10:00 to 10:25, giving everyone a 5-minute break between sessions.
Use this feature and stick to the times; thank me later.
4. Lead the Meeting
It’s your meeting; you invited people; they are investing their time, so it’s up to you to make something of it.
There are some things that are crucial in leading a meeting, first of all, and I think this goes without saying: SHOW UP (ON TIME). Do not let people wait, do not cancel last minute without an explanation; there is a team counting on you.
Another point is that people tend to discuss a lot and wander away from the topics. But if you’ve followed the steps above, you have an agenda, you have a goal, you need to stick with it and be rigorous. If the discussion starts to heat up, remind everyone about the goal and tasks at hand.
I know this sounds easier said than done because sometimes things come up that have to be addressed, but you’re better off noting them down and resolving them at a different time.
Nail these four basics and you will notice that people will actually like to attend your meetings.