128: Four Practices For Leading An Effective Meeting
Published February 17, 2014
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    If you do these four things with consistency at the meetings you lead, you’ll get vastly better results from the investment you are making in meeting time.

    Worst offenses

    Trying to come up with a topic to talk about
    Let's share what's going on (without any context for how/why)
    Information sharing only
    No agenda
    Too many agenda items
    People on devices
    Too many meetings total

    Good news! Many of us have almost complete control over how we run meetings as leaders
    1. Determine if the meeting needs to be held at all

    Is it for brainstorming, training that needs to be done in person, or making a decision? Yes, have the meeting.
    Is it for sharing of information? No, find a better way to get the information to people.
    Consider the real cost of staff time

    2. Have written or understood guidelines on communication, technology, decision-making, and overall culture of your meetings

    What do we do when we get off task?
    How will we capture what is decided and/or next actions?
    What rules will we have around the use of technology during meetings?
    Is PowerPoint needed?

    3. Set and send agenda in advance with the topic for discussion and end goal of the meeting, along with start and end times

    If the meeting discussion drifts, call attention to it and decide on addressing or tabling
    Begin and end on time (considering starting a bit after the hour or ending a bit early)

    4. Have everyone walk out of the room with clear action items

    Follow-up with documentation shortly thereafter
    Meeting notes - mindmapping (starting point) and outlining (finishing point). I use MindNode and OmniOutliner, respectively.

    What’s a best practice you’ve discovered for leading effective meetings?

    Feedback on this topic:

    Comments, questions, or feedback for the show:
    (949) 38-LEARN

    Thank you to Kimberly Dye, John Orlando, Chad McCallum, Daniela Abela, Jonathan Kemp, Carol Martino, Anurag Mishra, John Kramp, and Andrew Teo for subscribing to my weekly update this past week.

    If this show has been valuable to you as well, please leave a written review on iTunes or Stitcher by visiting http://coachingforleaders.com/itunes or http://coachingforleaders.com/stitcher
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