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Well-run meetings don’t happen by accident. They require clarity, structure, and active facilitation. When meetings lack purpose or direction, they waste time, reduce engagement, and create frustration. The guidance below focuses on practical ways to design and lead meetings that are focused, inclusive, and worth attending.
Running a meeting
Have a purpose
Most people begin planning their meetings by creating an agenda; this is a serious mistake. The first step should always be defining the purpose of the meeting. Everything else follows the purpose. Ask yourself:
- Why are we meeting?
- What do we need to accomplish?
- What are the meeting’s goals and objectives?
- What are the meeting deliverables?
- What will be different for us as a result of our meeting?
Have an agenda with times and names on it
Once you have clearly articulated the meeting’s purpose and objectives, it is time to design the agenda. The key word here is design. Creating a meeting that is engaging and productive requires more than simply jotting down a few topic areas—it requires being creative and thoughtful about the “what” needs to be discussed and the “how” to discuss them. Think of meetings as a series of conversations in which the participants must engage in order to accomplish the purpose. Ask yourself:
- What conversations need to take place in order to accomplish our purpose?
- In what order do we need to have these conversations?
- What is the goal of each conversation?
- What is the best way to conduct each conversation?
This is where a little “art” comes in. Be creative about how you conduct the conversations. Don’t just rely on introducing the topic and waiting for folks to chime in. There are many tools and techniques you can use to tap into the wisdom of your participants—all your participants, not just the most vocal ones. Techniques can range from simple “round-robins” where you go around the room and hear from everyone, to pair-shares, to more elaborate conversation structures like SWOT Analysis where participants identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Process
Create a meeting timeline based on the conversations you intend to facilitate. Keep your meeting tight, focused, and as short and as efficient as possible.
Invite the right people – who is leading the meeting?
Not having the right people in the room is one of the top ten complaints people have about wasted meetings. Many organisations have a bad habit of including everybody and their sister on meeting invites. This just wastes time and dilutes engagement. Don’t let this happen. Go back to the purpose of the meeting. Ask yourself:
- In order to accomplish our purpose, who needs to be in the room?
- Whose input, support, knowledge, or expertise is needed to reach the meeting goals?
Then, make sure those people are invited, available, and committed. If possible, try to limit the attendance of people who aren’t needed. Do what you can to invite the right people, and only the right people.
Open effectively
Meeting openings need to include:
- Opening Welcome: Officially open the meeting. Thank the participants for attending.
- Goals and objectives: Clearly state the meeting’s purpose, goals, and objectives. All too often people skip this critical piece which leaves participants either guessing at the objectives or bringing their own agenda to bear. Everybody needs to be super clear about the why and the what of this meeting!
- Motivate and Inspire: After you express the goal, take a moment to motivate the people in the room to participate. You chose them for a reason. Let them know you need their expertise, input, and wisdom to accomplish the goal. Let them know right from the start that they are the right people needed to accomplish the goal. Get them energised to participate.
- Introductions: Make sure people know who is “at the table.” Unless you are in a regular standing meeting or a team meeting, take the time to have participants introduce themselves. This not only helps build trust and relationships, but also helps participants discover the expertise in the room.
- Introduce Ground Rules: If you aren’t using ground rules, shame on you. (See Use Ground Rules below!) Ground Rules (or meeting norms, participation agreements, etc.) are a critical element for effective meetings. Make sure everyone is clear about the ground rules.
- Review the Agenda: Take a moment to review the agenda and disclose the road map for the meeting. This will help participants stay on topic and focused.
- Icebreakers: Icebreakers are used when leaders need to energise and warm up participants. Like every conversation on the agenda, icebreakers need to have a purpose. The icebreaker should support accomplishing the meeting’s objective. For example, if you need to build relationships and trust among the group, then choose an icebreaker that is focused on that. But if your meeting is about problem-solving or brainstorming, then choose an icebreaker that gets the creative juices flowing.
Bottom line: icebreakers with no purpose will fall flat and may alienate participants right from the start.
Use Ground Rules
Ground rules spell out the rules of the road for how to behave and interact in your meeting. Ground rules clearly articulate and encourage the desired behaviours and discourage the undesired behaviours that derail meetings. Properly communicated and enforced ground rules will take care of 99% of dysfunctional meeting behaviour. Ground rules give you and other participants the “permission” to redirect derailing behaviour. Customise your ground rules to the meeting at hand. Ground rules need to be clearly articulated and agreed upon at the start of the meeting. Make sure that participants know that it is EVERYBODY’S JOB to enforce the ground rules. A few all-purpose ground rules include:
- One conversation at a time: We listen to who is speaking, and we don’t carry on sidebar conversations.
- One topic at a time: If we are talking about “X,” we don’t go on tangents to talk about “Y” until we are done with “X”.
- Land the plane/Bottom lining: We try to be succinct and to the point.
- Don’t beat a dead horse: We don’t keep repeating ourselves or revisiting decisions already made.
- E-etiquette: We agree on how we are using (or not using!) electronic devices in our meeting.
- Full engagement: We agree to be fully invested and engaged.
- Timeliness: We agree to show up on time, start on time, and end on time.
- Share the air: We consciously try to make space for everybody to contribute (e.g., extroverts make space for introverts!) Ground Rules are a critical element for effective meetings. Make sure everyone is clear about them.
Park Items for Later
“Parking” items is a simple way to keep meetings on track without dismissing important contributions. Use it to capture ideas, questions, or discussions that are valid but not essential to the current meeting’s purpose.
When the conversation drifts into something related but out of scope, acknowledge it and agree to park it for later. Make these items visible by recording them on a whiteboard, flip chart, or shared document so participants know they haven’t been ignored.
Before closing the meeting, confirm what will happen next with the parked items. This might include assigning ownership, scheduling a follow-up discussion, or deciding that no further action is needed.
Manage Participant behaviour
It is your job as meeting leader to intervene on behaviours that derail meetings. It is your job to set the climate for engagement by encouraging productive behaviour and discouraging unproductive behaviour. Nothing thwarts engagement like letting bothersome behaviour run rampant in your meeting. To make matters worse, allowing unproductive behaviours to go unchecked breeds more unproductive behaviours. For example, letting one participant dominate the conversation creates fertile ground for others to disengage, drop out, or disappear into their electronics. If you have ground rules, this is when you and others enforce them.
Recap and Follow Up
One of the biggest blunders people make when leading meetings is failing to record, recap, and follow-up on action items, next steps and important meeting outcomes. Because most meetings create work and action items for the participants, it is the responsibility of the meeting leader to ensure all action items are actionable and understood. Simply put, every action item needs to be articulated, recorded, and confirmed. Every action item needs three things: 1) Clear deliverable; 2) Owner; and 3) Due date.
It is the meeting leader’s responsibility to follow up on action items! While the meeting leader may delegate this responsibility, it is their job to make sure follow-up happens.
Close and Appreciate
Congratulations! You’ve just run an effective and productive meeting. Make sure you end it on a high note. Take the time to officially close the meeting and thank your attendees for their participation, input, and collaboration. Time is our most valuable resource; be sure to show your appreciation to the people who gave you their time. Reinforce that you value their contributions.
Invite feedback
During the meeting, ask if there are any concerns or roadblocks. At the end of the meeting, ask those who attended for feedback about the effectiveness, duration, timing and content.
If you want to make sure you are leading effective meetings, take five minutes at the end of your meeting to do a quick evaluation. Try doing a quick plus/delta with your participants. Simply ask the attendees:
- Plus: What worked well with this meeting?
- Delta: What could we do differently next time to make it even better?
Getting input and feedback from your meeting participants helps you ensure your meetings are effective and engages participants in future meeting design.
The ability to lead effective meetings from wherever one sits is an indispensable leadership skill in every industry. It’s time to stop throwing away time and money and learn how to lead meetings that matter.
Experiment & try new ideas
Consider holding stand-up meetings, as research shows they can cut meeting time by a third. Consider hybrid meetings to allow those elsewhere to attend remotely via video conferencing.
Allocate housekeeping tasks by rotation
When allocating tasks like time-keeping, note-taking and getting refreshments, you can eliminate the possibility of discrimination or unconscious bias by using rotation.
Share relevant documents post-meeting
By sharing the meeting notes, you both provide a reminder of the action points that were agreed on and make everyone who attended feel their input was appreciated. Remember to share any assets referred to within the meeting, where appropriate.