How to Have Better Meetings Credit to Dr. Christian Poensgen. Follow him for more posts on habits, productivity & personal development Which of these expert strategies do you find most effective for making meetings productive? Original post below: ----- Rescue your team from the meeting trap. The unproductive meeting cycle goes like this: You're in the meeting. You wait for everyone. You beat around the bush. You leave the meeting. You are exhausted. You feel that it could've been an email. Maybe you're even confused. It doesn't have to be this way. Meetings can be useful and productive. Just take a look at these experts and their strategies: 1. Jeff Bezos ↳ Follow a clear agenda before every meeting. 2. Steve Jobs ↳ Keep your meetings under five people. 3. Richard Branson ↳ Stay standing in the meetings to keep focus. 4. Mark Zuckerberg ↳ Change your environment to spark creativity. 5. Sheryl Sandberg ↳ Designate roles to keep meetings organized. 6. Elon Musk ↳ Ensure follow-through with clear action items. Use this list as a guide to create your perfect meeting. Keep it simple, adapt, and refine as you go. Make every second meaningful. ----- Grow your professional skills with daily visual wisdom. Follow Infographic Insights for the best posts on: 📊 Business 🌟 Leadership 💡 Self-improvement
I like having productive meetings with a purpose, however as I work hybrid and often weeks being remote I believe there needs to be a balance of human interaction and business outcome interactions. The balance is different for each meeting but I often find the personal conversations in a meeting often reveal critical information for consideration within context of the business outcome. When things are too pointy and sharp I've found these often get lost and the balance of business and people outcomes gets skewed.
This is something my current leader is lacking. Meeting go on for 2 - 3 hours with nothing accomplished.
One thing that helped when I was chief of staff for a senior team earlier in my career was to designate topics as “inform, discuss or decide”. Most of the time the inform topics could be taken off the agenda and shared as an email - or coaching would help the presenter to evolve them into a discuss or decide, eliminating a walk through of dozens of slides that had already/would be been sent as a pre read. Discussion topics were limited to 2-3 questions. Decision topics were clearly outlined - send the background ahead of time and be clear about the decision that is needed. I completely agree about smaller meetings! Nothing of substance can be accomplished with more than 10 people in the room. And the right venue/setup can certainly unlock productivity and creativity.
I would consider this common sense, except for the rotation location. In my opinion, the purpose of the meeting is relevant here. For regular meetings, I don't see much value in rotating locations. However, if the meeting has a strategic or innovative purpose, then I see the value in doing so.
By writing down a clear agenda before sending iut the invites, the owner of the meeting will have reflected on the important parts to discuss and the meeting will be over with clear goals in no time.
Sheryl Sandberg's tactic of assigning roles keeps meetings from devolving into chaos. It's all about having the right structure to get things done efficiently.
Very informative & Insightful.. That will easily rescue and identify the process that has four stages. These four stages are preparation, incubation, insight, and verification..
Very informative, learned a lot!
Don't forget to 'Win Love Cry' along the way, Cry because of the amazing beauty within the world 🌎
I have 2 to add… (1) have a clear objective and expected outcome from the meeting. Too often we create an agenda first, out of habit it is same as always, sometimes lacking a clear intended outcome or objective beyond “having discussions” (2) make a meeting FIT For purpose. How often do we set a one- hour meeting (again by habit) when we only need a 15 min meeting. Try reducing that 60 min to 45 min, you’ll find it is very doable and keeps everyone focused.