New Leader Tuesday-15 Ideas to Help You Tame the Meeting Beast

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New Leader Tuesday at Management Excellence

The New Leader’s Series here at Management Excellence, is dedicated to the proposition that one of the most valuable things we can do is support the development of the next generation of leaders on our teams and in our organizations.

Meetings are interesting beasts to deal with as a new leader. Some (OK, very few) are incredibly productive and many (most) are gigantic and misdirected time sinks. Here are some ideas on optimizing your use of meetings.

15 Ideas to Help You Develop Effective Meeting Habits:

1. Do we need a meeting? Before calling a team meetings, ask and answer whether the topic(s) at hand might not be better discussed in more casual one-on-one or very small group sessions. The more unproductive meetings you can kill at the source, the better.

2. The money value of time. Never forget that time is our most valuable currency, and large gatherings for less than compelling reasons squander that currency.

3. Overpopulation. Beware meetings that beget other meetings. They multiply faster than rabbits and before you know it, your calendar is filled with these recurring events.

4. Here and now. Spontaneous meetings for a clear purpose can be much more productive and energizing than anything resembling a status meeting.

5. Death to status meetings. Speaking of status meetings, these events typically don’t reflect a clear and compelling purpose. While some status updates are relevant, the frequency or duration of these sessions might be reduced through better use of technology tools. (Related post: 4 Big Reasons to Kill Your Weekly Status Meeting)

6. Avoid the “Round the Table Update of Pain.” This one has you rotating through the attendees one by one and providing them each an opportunity to share their updates, air their grievances and lobby for their pet projects. You feel like you are facilitating a democratic exchange of ideas, but this one is far from productive. Most of the issues should be taken care of outside of the meeting room.

7. Build in flexibility. Create a standing agenda for operations meetings, but leave some time for open discussion or for hearing new ideas.

8. Cross-pollinate. Invite colleagues from other groups to your team’s meetings. This is a great way to build bridges and gain insights from different vantage points across the organization.

9. Compartmentalize. Create focused time for thinking and planning with your team members. Don’t blend operations and planning in the same session.

10. Innovate. Change venues to keep things fresh. Rearrange the furniture once in awhile. Remove the chairs from the meeting room. Ban powerpoint updates and require verbal updates. Rotate agenda planning and meeting management responsibilities between your team members.

11. Break the 60 minute law. OK, there’s actually no law in the universe that requires that a meeting scheduled for one hour to run the full hour. Put a stake in the meeting if it wraps in 35 minutes.

12. Death to Monday Morning Meetings. Personal preference: skip the first thing Monday morning meetings. You want your team members hitting the ground running on their priorities and issues. If you must have a weekly recurring meeting, set it up for later Monday afternoon. People will be well into their week’s activities and current on the issues and opportunities.

13. Recuse yourself once in awhile. Don’t feel compelled to attend every brainstorming meeting with your team members. Your presence as the leader introduces bias into the session. Trust your team and stay home and wait for the results.

14. Introduce Anonymity. If you must attend ideation meetings, use a number of different tools and techniques, including nominal group approaches where ideas are submitted anonymously. You can blend traditional brainstorming with these other approaches and gain both quantity and creativity by reducing visible peer pressure.

15. Guide the tough discussions. For “tough issues” discussions, learn and use the Six Thinking Hats technique to reduce the churn and direct the meetings towards a productive outcome.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The right meeting with the right approach at the right time run the right way can be a valuable event. Get any of those wrong, and you risk wasting valuable time. Learn to make meetings work for you and your team members and ferociously guard against time-wasting bad meeting habits.

For readers with experience making meetings more effective, please add to the list!

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