Everything I Know About Running Meetings That Don’t Waste Your Time
Even if you’ve attended hundreds of meetings in your life, there’s something pretty different about running a meeting yourself. There’s something even more different about running many meetings yourself.
In the past, I’ve written about how to not let meetings take over your life. Give that a read if you find yourself drowning in meetings.
But, assuming that there are some necessary meetings that you can’t avoid or shorten: how do you actually maximize your time spent a meeting?
I’ve been in approximately 300 meetings since beginning my job a little less than 6 months ago.
Some of those lasted 10 minutes, many lasted 45, a few lasted 3 hours. Take my advice or leave it, but I’ll fight you to say I might know a thing or two about how to have a good meeting.
And the good news for you is: I’m going to be sharing what I’ve learned with you today so that you can effectively run meetings that enhance your work life instead of slowing it down.
Here are my 12 tips to run a successful meeting that doesn’t waste your coworker’s time (or yours):
1. Provide ample notice
A recurring theme throughout this tutorial is going to be “proper preparation”. Preparation, with the prefix pre-, means before something happens. In order to pre- anything, you need to actually have time to do that.
That’s all a wordy and technical way of saying: give appropriate notice before as many meetings as you can for maximum results. 24 hours minimum is a courtesy but, for best results, aim for 2-3 days minimum. If you go too far into the future, you might similarly run into a problem where the attendees of your meeting haven’t prepared; obviously not because they didn’t have enough time, but because they had too much time and inevitably forgot.
How much notice is appropriate will depend on three big components:
The attendees
The urgency of a looming deadline or checkpoint
The importance of the project
Just know that, for most people and most things, 2-3 days is a sweet-spot of notice preparation.
2. Have an agenda—however rough it is
I’m a big believer in meeting agendas and believe you ought to be too. Most of my meeting agendas aren’t even very thorough or detailed. A lot of the time, they’re little more than a bullet list of questions. Sometimes they’ll be more involved, with copied + pasted notes or links to further resources, but many times they’re just questions to begin a discussion in the meeting.
Having an agenda helps you keep the purpose of the meeting in sight: usually to solve a complex problem that you can’t (or shouldn’t) try to do alone. An agenda makes sure you are actually working towards that goal throughout your time, and not just spending time talking about other things.
The last big reason an agenda is useful is because it helps save re-cap time. Especially if you (or your meeting attendees) are in back to back meetings that day, it can be hard to enter a completely new meeting, with new people, and remember what you’re trying to accomplish and how far you got last time. An agenda is an opportunity for everyone to quickly be reminded of where things left off (simply through the implications of the questions being asked, if nothing else).
3. Pull up last meeting’s notes if you can (optional)
I don’t do this every time, but it’s definitely an extra-mile type of protocol if you want to be as absolutely prepared as possible. This is helpful if you’re in a particularly weighty meeting with heavy hitters in your organization (or customers or what have you).
Having last meeting’s notes already pulled up (or very, very accessible if you only have them nearby and not open) is sort of like writing an exam with your textbook beside you. You have little to lose by having it there, and potentially have a lot to gain by having it quickly accessible.
In situations where you may be in a divisive or decisive conversation, being able to quickly refer to exactly what happened last time can help you if you struggle to process information quickly and think on your feet. Just saying.
4. Keep chit-chat short
If you’re fortunate enough to get along with most of your coworkers, it’s easy to let the first 5, 10, 15 minutes of your meeting be dedicated solely to chit-chat about life. I get it—and I am a firm believer that getting to know your coworkers on a personal level is not just beneficial, but necessary for success. But meetings where you need to GET STUFF DONE are not the place for too much chit chat.
This small talk at the beginning of meetings can very quickly eat into your meeting time which could hurt you if you aren’t cautious.
Get comfortable with politely interrupting (usually you need to start talking over someone which is an uncomfortable thing to do the first few times) and saying, “Thanks everyone for coming to this meeting”. People generally stop talking when they realize you’re trying to begin. You’re also interrupting with a friendly greeting, so bonus points for that.
5. Start on time
I will admit that this is a personal pet peeve of mine and something that gets me frustrated if it’s habitual with certain coworkers. My personal stance on this might be a bit stranger than some, but I think I’ve got pretty good reason to feel the way I do about it.
Set the standard that meetings you schedule start on time. Period. If someone’s late to your meeting, it’s up to you if you want to waste time re-capping for them, or continuing on and instructing them to get notes from someone else after the meeting. One of those two options is a little more cutthroat than the other, and I’m not saying you should do it every time, but there is a time and a place that I don’t think anyone can blame you.
Showing up late for time is incredibly disrespectful of other people’s time. I am someone who is happy to lecture habitual late-for-meeting people because it speaks immensely to the (at times inadvertent) beliefs that person holds about time management and their impact on others.
With few exceptions, showing up late for meetings (especially habitually) demonstrates a disrespect of the attendees who planned well enough ahead to show up on time. Showing up on time does, indeed, take planning and forethought. Showing up late demonstrates a lack of both. Doing so again and again shows a complete disregard for anyone other than yourself. And that drives me nuts.
Address your issues with anyone who routinely shows up late (privately for best results), and instil the understanding that your meetings are serious and begin at the moment you plan for them to.
6. Give a quick re-cap (optional)
Again, this step isn’t always necessary, especially if you:
Met recently enough that everyone remembers the last one clearly
Have a clear agenda for today’s meeting
But occasionally, it can be a helpful way to lead into your agenda / discussion questions if you want to take a very brief trip down memory lane at the onset of your current meeting.
7. Be direct about what you’re here to accomplish
To go the extra mile in guaranteeing your meeting is successful, articulate what gathering today is meant to accomplish. Even though this should be pretty clearly implied by your agenda, it doesn’t hurt to say it out loud again.
This is also helpful if there are particularly meeting-savvy people in your attendee list who can help you steer the conversation towards your intended finish line. Then you don’t feel like you need to be doing 100% of the work yourself.
Being direct about what you’re trying to accomplish also gives you tons of ammunition (and confidence) to pause any derailing of your meeting dead in its tracks and bring it back to a productive place. No one can get upset with you if you were clear from the moment the meeting began about what you’re all here to do.
Sometimes people will have a different impression of what you’re wanting to get done, so just remove all doubt and say it aloud. As much as I’m a person who tries to give the benefit of the doubt anywhere, sometimes…
8. Ask direct questions
In #2, I explained that most meetings are to collaboratively solve a complex problem that you can’t do alone. That’s great, but how do you actually accomplish that?
Besides the last 7 points I’ve made about how to do it, singling people out with very specific questions can be a great way to start.
The Bystander Effect is when a crowd of people sees something bad happening and everyone assumes that someone else will intervene but no one is willing to go first. You would be shocked how many people have died with entire crowds of capable people nearby who could’ve helped but didn’t because everyone was just waiting around to be told what to do, or they assumed someone else would do something.
We, as humans, have a bad tendency to be passive in unfamiliar situations; particularly if we have respected peers nearby and we (if we’re being honest with ourselves) want to protect our perceived wisdom and knowledge. I think we fear saying something stupid (and demonstrating our ignorance) more than we realize.
So even though you’re still putting someone in a tight spot when you call them out to answer a question, most people would rather be thought of as incompetent than a coward (thus, they’d rather chance saying something that might not be dumb, rather than clam up and say nothing at all). Of course, this is just one guy’s opinion, and your mileage may vary greatly.
All I know is that the times I’ve called someone out for a specific question or line item on the agenda, I’m more likely to actually get the ball rolling on what we’ve met to do. So I do it.
9. Take notes
I’m probably hurting myself by putting this at #9 of 12 in the batting order here, because this is likely the most important step to my approach.
Take lots of notes about your meeting.
I’ve heard a lot of people say they struggle to deeply engage in a meeting while also taking notes. That’s fair: I get it. But I’m going to challenge you by saying “Get over it.” You need to learn how to do both if you want to succeed, in my humble opinion.
An alternative is to record your meeting (either the entire video call if it’s online, or via voice memo if it’s in person) and transcribe notes later, but holy moly that’s gotta be like 3 or 4 times the amount of work and time investment as opposed to being just a little slower when you’re actually in the meeting because you’re jotting notes down in a hot hurry.
Notes will provide you with a few things:
A quick visual reference of what you’ve decided as a group
Records brilliant, lightning-strike ideas for later reference
A deeper recollection of the meeting because your brain is processing what it’s hearing and then writing that down (in your own words) to recall later. Studies have proven this is super helpful for engagement (and another reason to get over complaining about note taking while hosting a meeting and just doing it)
Easier to assign homework at the end of the meeting
Makes Step #12 below even easier
If you really, really need to, invite someone to the meeting whose sole purpose is to record notes. Make sure this person knows they’re not being asked to speak unless very specifically addressed in the meeting. This means you shouldn’t be inviting someone who has a direct stake in whatever’s being met about, but someone still competent enough in what you’re discussing to interpret information being talked about well enough to write it down.
If inviting someone separate isn’t an option, ask a trusted colleague to be responsible for recording notes and emailing them out after the meeting. I can’t stress how important it is to have a documentation of your meeting in some way.
Things not written get forgotten. That I believe with all my heart. Ensure your meetings don’t become a waste of time by writing them down.
The last thing I want to clarify about note writing in case it isn’t clear: as you’re making your notes mid-meeting, it’s totally ok if they are a disaster and unrefined, half-sentences, weird punctuation, scatterbrained. It rarely takes more than 4 minutes when the meeting is done to read over your notes and clean them up before sending them out or saving the document and moving on with your day. Don’t think your notes need to be flawless as you’re writing them. This isn’t an English essay.
10. Last 1/4 of the meeting: Immediately switch to next steps
When you’re hitting 75% of your meeting time and see that looming 25% quickly approaching, try as hard as you can to switch gears and start discussing what needs to be done next to advance the project. Do you need to be scheduling another meeting? Do some people need to do research before meeting again? Did we reach a conclusion to our complex problem?
Always aim for practicality in next steps: try hard not to be vague.
11. Schedule follow up if necessary
A lot of meetings (with the root cause of complex issues that need collaboration to solve) will require another meeting on the subject: preferably far enough away that people have time to actually do something between now and then.
Before your current meeting is up, at least have a brief discussion about when the next meeting might be. Whether you need to all agree on a rough time of day or a day of the week or a week in the month, make sure everyone is roughly on the same page so that you can hopefully avoid rescheduling a meeting 3 or 4 times and losing steam between now and then.
An important note about scheduling follow up meetings: always recommend a date; never give broad suggestions. We want to be assertive and make it as easy as possible for people to simply say “Yes.” It also helps ensure there aren’t too many cooks in the kitchen for a process (that should be) as simple as choosing the next time you’ll get together.
12. Bonus points: Email notes / homework
If you followed Step #9 closely, you should have a beautiful (or semi-beautiful) page of notes. Amazing. Send it out in an email to your team. This works really well to cover your butt in case someone misunderstands instructions later (or outright blames you for not having been clear during the meeting).
If you commit (at the beginning of the meeting) to being the one who will email out notes at the end of the meeting, it also ensures you’re actually doing it. Again, fine, if you can’t record notes and lead the meeting at the same time, just make sure someone else knows they should be recording notes and sending them out at the end.
In a similar vein, don’t be scared to assign homework to people. Many people are willing to get involved and do what they have to do if you just tell them what it is you need. Better to ask for too much and have someone push back, than to be too scared to ask for anything and try to do it all yourself.
In Summary:
Running meetings can be tricky, but they don’t have to be. Sometimes you can’t avoid them taking up a good chunk of your time, but you can avoid them being a waste of your time if you follow these steps.
Depending on you and your context, some of these are going to be more important than others. Use your brain to adapt what you need and leave behind the rest.
Collaboration between your coworkers is a gift. I had almost none of that as a freelancer for 5 years. While it might suck to have to work with people sometimes, recognize that a lot of good can happen in meetings if you take the right approach to lead it well.
