The Importance of Effective Meetings

Meetings are vitally important – if done well. Meetings help people feel included, trusted, and that they are important team members, as well as giving them the opportunity to contribute to the success of our companies. 

Meetings and individual one-on-one conversations are fuel that runs our companies.

Our organizational culture is critically important and drives the consistency of our success, or lack thereof. And our culture is not determined solely by our most senior leaders. The principles, practices and behavior of our middle managers is equally important. We’ve likely all heard “People don’t leave their companies, they leave (quit) their bosses.” This is true. 

Meetings give important opportunities for our team members to contribute their ideas and also letting them know our expectations, needs and wants from them.

Unfortunately, a lot of meetings, well, most, are ineffective. We speak with literally hundreds in the workplace each year as we are facilitating our leadership coaching and assessments of organizational culture and leadership (360s). A theme which comes up often is meetings, e.g., the number of meetings and the inefficiency of the meetings. This is worth addressing as it certainly is important.

One highly effective leader offered to me that “We can work or we can meet.” While I chuckled, I have thought about that ever since. So many have said “Ugh, another meeting. There are so many and so little is accomplished.”

Of course, again, meetings are essential. No question. Yet, they should be purposeful and efficient.

Here are ideas to consider:

• What is the purpose of the meeting? If it is for information sharing, can it be shared by email? This could save time. Then the meeting could be to ask questions and to clarify – and to make decisions.

• Meetings are typically scheduled for an hour, as that fits a calendar. Why not 45 minutes, or 30? Let’s respect people’s time.

• Start meetings on time and end on time. In my prior career, based on feedback from our people, we committed to follow this principle.

Our agenda discussions began on the button, not 5 after, and ended at the scheduled time. When someone showed up late, which of course will happen, we would not circle back to repeat what we had covered. Guess what? People arrived on schedule.

• Are the right people invited to the meeting? And only those that need to be there? 

• Have we asked our team members in advance for their ideas of discussion topics?

• Are agendas distributed in advance – ideally three days in advance? I learned from reading Susan Cain’s insightful book, Quiet, that introverts may have the most to contribute, the most helpful ideas, but likely only if they know the topic(s) well ahead of a discussion. Otherwise, as they are deep thinkers, the discussion may end while they are still thinking, and their ideas and contributions go unspoken. Just think about meetings. Generally, isn’t it the same people who usually speak out?

• Are we encouraging everyone to offer input and contribute their ideas?

• Are we assuring everyone that respectful disagreement and debate are desired? We do not want “yes” men and women, but, for certain, when the discussion and meeting end, we unite and all are supportive of decisions and no complaints afterwards.

Our suggestion to avoid endless, ineffective and inefficient meetings is to ask the people in these meetings:

• When should we meet?

• How can we make our meetings more productive?

At the end of each meeting, check in with everyone, and to please be honest – How are they feeling about the meeting? And are they in agreement about and supportive of decisions?

Let’s do our best to end these ineffective meetings. Remember, the best ideas are bottom up ideas, so ask our people for their ideas about making our meetings meaningful.

As leaders, let’s respect our people’s time and enable them to add the most value, and then our people, our culture, our teamwork, our morale, and our companies will thrive.