How to conduct a meeting

“Not another waste-of-time meeting!” You’ve probably had this thought when a meeting in­vit­a­tion shows up in your Outlook inbox. It’s a well-known fact that some managers love to schedule meetings all the time. That’s not always a bad thing. Ideally, regular meetings help to improve com­mu­nic­a­tion and pro­ductiv­ity. Un­for­tu­nately, the reality is often different. Far too often, meetings are used merely as a break from work or as a platform for self-promotion. They drag on instead of simply focusing on the problems at hand.

Many employees become frus­trated with the “meeting madness” that plagues many offices and forget that running effective meetings is actually possible. But this isn’t the job of the meeting leader alone: It’s the re­spons­ib­il­ity of each meeting par­ti­cipant. Some team leaders and project managers see meetings as a necessary evil and par­ti­cip­ate in them half-heartedly. A meeting can’t be effective unless all par­ti­cipants play their part. Good pre­par­a­tion and clear del­eg­a­tion of tasks are key to con­duct­ing effective meetings. If you consider the following meeting tips before the next time you conduct a meeting, you may find that it is much more pro­duct­ive than ever before.

So, the meetings you regularly conduct aren’t going well, and now you’re wondering how to conduct a meeting ef­fect­ively. Start by identi­fy­ing the causes. This will help you develop a strategy to make sure that you are con­duct­ing effective meetings every time.

The most common time wasters and dis­rupt­ive factors in meetings are:

• Lack of punc­tu­al­ity: Although everyone’s already gathered in the meeting room, one par­ti­cipant is still at her desk writing emails and another one’s late because they decided to get coffee and snacks at the last minute. That’s dis­respect­ful to the person hosting the meeting as well as to everyone else who showed up on time even though they too had other important tasks they could be doing.
• Lack of pre­par­a­tion: Everyone’s sitting around the table, but nobody knows what the meeting’s actually about. This happens when there’s no agenda with specific agenda items, or nobody’s taken the time to read the agenda. Having to bring everyone up to speed before you can even have a pro­duct­ive dis­cus­sion is extremely tedious. Many times you’ll lose the attention of par­ti­cipants who are already very familiar with the agenda item.
• Lack of structure: Without clear or­gan­isa­tion, things quickly become chaotic. People jump from one topic to the next, talk about items that either aren’t up for debate or topics that won’t be relevant until later in the meeting. Other par­ti­cipants quickly lose focus, switch off, and can’t wait for the meeting to end. People who know how to conduct effective meetings know that an organised structure is a must.
• Going off on tangents: Sometimes certain par­ti­cipants will debate at length about project details that are almost com­pletely ir­rel­ev­ant to the day-to-day business of the others. Other times, topics that have already been thrashed out are brought up over and over again without being resolved. Before you know it, a brief update turns into an out-of-control policy debate with no outcome.
• Unequal op­por­tun­ity to speak: Some people are reluctant to speak in a large group of people, while others seize the op­por­tun­ity to engage in endless self-promotion. If nobody ensures that everyone gets roughly the same chance to speak, there’s a risk that notorious self-promoters will take over. Many good ideas are never presented because more reserved par­ti­cipants never get a chance to speak.
• No leader/moderator: The person des­ig­nated to conduct a meeting is ill-prepared or in­ef­fect­ive and relies on the par­ti­cipants to get the meeting up and running. Without strict lead­er­ship, a range of things can happen that are rarely pro­duct­ive, such as endless mono­loguing, awkward silences, or random jumping around between topics that may or may not be relevant.
• No results: No list of effective meeting tips would be complete without this one: The meeting is over, and as everyone heads back to their desks, they’re already wondering what the point of the meeting was. Without concrete outcomes and action items, a meeting is really just a waste of time.

Anyone who attends meetings regularly is familiar with these problems. Com­plain­ing about them is easy, but solving these problems is more difficult. If you are supposed to conduct a meeting, you should let every par­ti­cipant know that they are also re­spons­ible for the outcome. Col­leagues who come un­pre­pared to a meeting every week only to call it a waste of time af­ter­wards play a big role in making their meetings pointless. It’s better to openly express con­struct­ive criticism and to make concrete sug­ges­tions for im­prove­ment instead of always com­plain­ing about meetings. If the criticism is le­git­im­ate and well-founded, everyone can join forces to figure out the problem and make sure that running effective meetings becomes the new normal.

If you conduct a meeting that suffers from any of the above problems, don’t be afraid to take action. It might mean rep­rim­and­ing late­comers or simply calling off the meeting if no one is prepared. That takes a conscious effort and should also fit your lead­er­ship style. But as long as you remain pro­fes­sion­al and objective, there’s nothing wrong with reminding par­ti­cipants that such behaviour wastes their own time and that of their co-workers.

Once you’ve iden­ti­fied the problems, you can work on solutions. Problems are often easier to solve than you think, because most meetings simply lack or­gan­isa­tion and lead­er­ship. You can make great progress simply by improving these two areas.

Meetings can sometimes take many hours to prepare, depending on the meeting size and subject. But even if you’re the one who is supposed to conduct a meeting, you don’t have to do it all on your own. Delegate tasks and assign mod­er­at­ors for in­di­vidu­al agenda items. The more people you involve ahead of time, the more likely that everyone will be invested in the success of the meeting.

The first step should be to state a clear goal. Is the primary objective of the meeting to inform everyone about the status or progress of a project? Or is the goal to find solutions to specific problems or make important decisions? Next, agree on the pre­lim­in­ary details of the meeting so that par­ti­cipants have a chance to think about questions or sug­ges­tions.

In the in­vit­a­tion, identify the specific area in which decisions need to be made or solutions need to be found. That way, par­ti­cipants can focus on the topic in advance. You also might start by col­lect­ing sug­ges­tions for topics from all par­ti­cipants, es­pe­cially if not everyone works in the same office or at the same location. You can use com­mu­nic­a­tion tools and cloud solutions such as Microsoft 365 so that par­ti­cipants can record their notes in the Outlook in­vit­a­tion or save them in a shared document.

Once the goal is clear and the topics have been defined, your job is to structure the meeting. It’s best to structure the meeting so that you start with one or two “easy” topics instead of delving straight into the most complex topic. That way, par­ti­cipants can gradually feel their way into the dis­cus­sion. But don’t save complex topics until last because people tend to lose focus as the meeting goes on.

Once you’ve defined the order of topics, create a clearly organised agenda with in­di­vidu­al agenda items and send it to all the par­ti­cipants along with any necessary documents. The best time for sending the agenda depends on the size of the meeting. If par­ti­cipants need to do a lot of pre­par­a­tion before the meeting, they’ll need all the necessary in­form­a­tion at least one week in advance. For smaller meetings, two or three days is suf­fi­cient pre­par­a­tion time.

You can prevent dis­cus­sions from spinning out of control with no outcome by defining a set schedule that allocates a certain amount of dis­cus­sion time for each agenda item.

If you had trouble running effective meetings in the past due to the behaviour of par­ti­cipants, you should establish clear rules right from the outset. It’s often necessary and helpful to remind par­ti­cipants to let others speak, discuss topics ob­ject­ively and stick to the topic at hand, even if you think adults shouldn’t need such reminders.

Knowing how to conduct a meeting involves more than just welcoming everyone, present­ing agenda items, and making closing remarks. As the leader of the meeting, you’re also the moderator. You monitor the struc­tured process and ensure that as many par­ti­cipants as possible are involved in dis­cus­sions. With the right mod­er­at­ing skills, you can ensure that speaking time is divided up fairly and everyone gets to have a say with due respect for in­di­vidu­al per­son­al­it­ies (com­puls­ive talkers, dis­in­ter­ested in­di­vidu­als, or shy par­ti­cipants, etc.).

Tech­niques such as brain­storm­ing or mind maps can also help to gather ideas from more reserved par­ti­cipants. You can rein in col­leagues who like to hear them­selves talk by gently reminding them of the schedule.

The most important part of con­duct­ing effective meetings is making sure that discussed plans are put into action. All too often, par­ti­cipants decide on an action but never specify who will do it and by when. Before the meeting ends, you should assign an owner and a deadline for every action discussed during the meeting. That person will then be the point of contact for the topic and will report on its progress at the next meeting.

Someone should take down all key points in the meeting minutes so that a few days later everyone remembers what was discussed and what they have to do. An outcome report is ideal for team and project meetings. This report is a table of meeting outcomes as well as planned actions, including owners and deadlines. Unlike the meeting minutes, the outcome report is not a detailed record of the entire meeting. The person doing the recording can sim­ul­tan­eously take part in the meeting and dis­cus­sions. Another advantage is that col­leagues who were unable to attend the meeting can read the report and quickly get up to speed.

Please note the legal dis­claim­er relating to this article.