Turn Unproductive Meetings into Effective Gatherings with These Tips

Ineffective meetings can ruin your team's output by wasting energy, siphoning productivity, and distracting you from objectives. Poor meetings often result in employee burnout and can severely impact your bottom line. Some studies estimate over $200 billion US dollars are lost as a result of ineffective meetings each year.

This article details multiple ways you can transform your ineffective meetings into productive and effective uses of company time.

Prepare

The most important rule for better meetings is to prepare things ahead of time. Preparation is the responsibility of everybody, from the facilitator down to the attendee.

Prepared meetings are more productive, and informed attendees mean less time will need to be spent on clarifying meeting items.

Preparation can also help make the meeting more inclusive by ensuring all members are up-to-speed on agenda items and, therefore, confident enough to voice their opinions during the discussion.

The following are some tips that will help you to ensure your team is prepared for meetings:

Tips for meeting preparation

- Share the agenda: To assist your team members in forming ideas, decide on topics in advance of the meeting and keep your team up-to-date so they can prepare for an informed discussion. Because some attendees may need time to process topics and information, providing the agenda earlier also helps to make the meeting more inclusive.

- Do a pre-read: A pre-read is when members take time before the meeting to quickly read through the agenda, topics of discussion, and any other relevant documents. The purpose of a pre-read is to get members on the same page and prime the meeting for an informed discussion.

- Use an application: Integrated meeting platforms like topboard can take your agenda-setting even further with advanced functionality and enhanced control over meeting elements. Topboard facilitates the simple use of many integral meeting tools both in the office and online.

Arrive early (5 mins)

Encourage your team to arrive at meetings a few minutes early to maximize efficiency.

An extra 3-5 minutes can help to:

- Get everyone on the same page before the meeting

- Ensure everyone is comfortably settled before the meeting

- Give the facilitator time to fix audio or video issues

It has been proven that arriving late to a meeting has a negative impact on effectiveness overall. When members arrive late, attendees can become disengaged or feel like the meeting is already a waste of time, which results in less discussion and attention.

Tips for arriving early

- Set a reminder (10 mins): Adding a reminder or alarm as soon as the meeting is scheduled will ensure no late or missed meetings. Setting the reminder 10 minutes before the meeting will give team members adequate time to finish up tasks and make their way to the meeting.

- Schedule lag time: Some organizations choose to schedule a 'lag time' into their meeting times, which gives team members a buffer time between meetings. This built-in time can reduce lateness by recognizing operational slow-downs that might prevent members from showing up on time.

Remain present

Holding focus can be difficult during large meetings, but remaining present and engaged throughout the session is integral to an effective meeting.

Tips to stay present

- Intentional invitations: Take steps to ensure everyone who is participating in the meeting is there for a reason. Avoid inviting people that don't have a purpose, and make sure everyone knows what their purpose is.

- Agenda collaboration: Take your team's opinions into consideration when crafting the agenda. Doing so will instill a greater sense of collaborative responsibility and will increase discussion engagement. Using topboard makes it easy to collaborate agendas and add topics on the fly.

- Reduce distractions: The use of technology, while beneficial, can also greatly distract us. During the meeting, put electronic distractions away and close down any tabs or applications that are not relevant to the discussion. Closing notifications and shutting down your laptop and phone will ensure your attention is undivided.

Break the ice

Using an icebreaker - although unrelated to the topic of the meeting - can help to switch people out of 'observation mode' and put them into 'discussion mode'.

In theory, using an icebreaker to initiate the meeting engages the entire team from the start and prevents members from sliding back into an observation role.

Icebreaking tips

Refer to a template: Look up or put together your own list of ice-breaking questions. These should include questions that open up the team, establish cohesion and strengthen team bonds.

Alternate themes: Effective icebreakers utilize a variety of topics like personal interests, professional goals, and more. Make sure to mix up your ice-breakers with fun and serious questions to get to know everybody.

Assign a facilitator

Meetings without a facilitator can be easily derailed. A study suggests that one of the top reasons attendees leave a meeting unsatisfied is due to getting off-topic Assigning a facilitator keeps the meeting focused and running smoothly.

People often view meetings as a disruption to their work, which is why a facilitator's primary goal should be to promote a sense of presence among the group.

Solve problems

Sometimes, members get so focused on discussing a problem that they never bother discussing a solution. The key to an effective meeting is making sure your team is working towards problem-solving rather than just identification.

Although it's unrealistic to expect every problem to be solved within a meeting's time frame, steps can be taken to move closer to solutions while increasing overall productivity.

Problem-solving tips

Define outcomes: Identifying the potential outcomes resulting from certain meeting items can narrow the focus of the discussion and keep it from becoming diluted with irrelevant input.

Use a tool such as topboard to delegate tasks to participants during the meeting.

Review and share notes

Simple notes can make meetings more effective by enhancing transparency, clarity, and engagement. Meeting notes let attendees review the content of the meeting, perform assigned tasks, and keep other team members informed.

- Review: Before departing from the meeting, take a moment to share and compare notes with your colleagues while the content is still fresh. This will help to clarify any concepts and ensures everyone leaves the meeting on the same page. Additionally, notes should be automatically sent out using email or a similar note-sharing platform.

- Consider using an app: topboard can be used to streamline the note-taking process

Stick to schedule

Finally, always ensure you end your meetings on time. Sticking to your schedule minimizes disruptions to team workflow. Moreover, sticking to your stated schedule shows workers that you respect their time.

Time management tips

- Stick to the agenda: Set time blocks reflecting how long you want to spend discussing a certain agenda item, and move on after that time is up. Project the timetable for the group to see so they know how long to spend on each topic.

- Cues: Establish some key phrases that team members can use to keep each other on-topic.

Using set phrases will make it easier for members to communicate without offending each other.