How to Have Effective and Enjoyable Workplace Meetings

This meeting started 10 minutes late. Jerry has his head down on the conference room table. Glenn, our “note taker,” is writing a long political piece on Facebook while my manager tries to rein in people who are having side conversations about the drama in this year’s Oscars. Can we just get this meeting started already? What are we talking about anyways? I literally have no clue what we’re meeting about. The only agenda item said, “Discuss important matters.” At least we got something that resembles an agenda this time. Boy, do I have a lot of work to get done that I’m not doing as I sit here in my fifth meeting of the week. (It’s Tuesday.) This meeting has officially sucked my soul right out of me. 

In most organizations, meetings are necessary. In fact, in some ways, they’re where the real stuff happens. Meetings, at their best, are the places where we collaborate, share and dialogue about important information, process change, build trust, make decisions, and more. But the reality is this: Nearly half the people asked by Salary.com said “too many meetings” was the top time-waster in the office, and nearly that amount said that poorly organized meetings result in them not having enough time to get their work done. What’s more, the scheduling platform Doodle estimated the cost of poorly organized meetings in 2019 to be at $399 billion in the U.S alone. Ouch.

One of Nash Consulting’s organizational principles is that meetings are a microcosm of the broader organization’s culture, meaning that you can literally see the important cultural dynamics of an organization playing out right in front of you during meetings: How decisions are (or aren’t) made, follow through (or the lack thereof), issues of trust and respect, timeliness, equity, and so much more. Which leads to a piece of really good news: In many ways you can actually reverse engineer an organization’s culture by improving their meetings!

When organizations learn to hold effective meetings, we see teams begin to make more and better decisions, increase the quality of their collaboration, build stronger trust among group members, become more productive, not less, and actually solve problems and remove roadblocks.

There are many ingredients that go into creating the ideal meeting experience, but here are a few ideas that have worked for us and our clients:

1. Have a skilled meeting facilitator.

This is literally the most important strategy, by far. And the toughest to accomplish.  Remember the Peter Principle (People tend to get promoted until they reach their level of incompetence)?  It’s the whole “Welcome to management, good luck” thing that can really sabotage the health of an organization. Well, the same thing applies to meeting facilitation. “Welcome to leading meetings, good luck!” You all know how horrible it feels to sit through a meeting that’s run like a kindergartener’s birthday party. The absolute biggest factor in whether a meeting is effective (and enjoyable) is whether or not the person leading that meeting has decent facilitation skills.  We highly recommend that your agency spend the time and money on meeting facilitation training for anyone who regularly leads meetings. The facilitator needs to be someone who knows how to engage participants, create an environment of safety and collaboration, create and effectively utilize an agenda, and ask good questions. Engaging participants means noticing when someone is taking up too much airtime and when others are not having a chance to express opinions or ideas. It’s the simple but powerful, “I’m curious what YOU think about this.” It’s recognizing when participants are getting lost and skillfully working with them to bring them back on track. It’s the body language and gestures that demonstrate that this is a safe place for inquiry and ideas. It’s the artful dance of information distribution and group collaboration. And it’s so much more.

2. Don’t let bad meeting behaviors slide.

It’s the role of the facilitator to monitor this, but the entire group needs to hold each other accountable. But first, a group needs to define what meeting behaviors they want to cultivate and reward. These should be explicit. It’s difficult to cut out bad behaviors and hold each other accountable unless everyone clearly understands what’s acceptable and what is not. Sit with your team and brainstorm on all the meeting behaviors you want to see demonstrated and the ones you want to see go away. Write a list. Review the list regularly. It works. (Tip: A good facilitator will understand how to tactfully intervene in bad behaviors without derailing the whole meeting or embarrassing a team member. Check out podcast episode #21 for the our first of two parts on running effective and enjoyable meetings.)

3. Have a good agenda.

The bottom line is that everyone should know why they’re gathered. The agenda provides a compass for the conversation so the meeting can get back on course if the discussion wanders off track. Sending out an agenda ahead of time will also allow people to process their ideas and opinions before everyone converges together. Your agenda should include specific topics to be covered with their accompanying duration (so that you can create a reasonable agenda that you actually get through); time for discussion/brainstorming/problem solving (otherwise you could have just emailed the information); a “parking lot” for off-topic items; and an ABCD wrap up (see #7 below).

4. Pay attention to the logistics.

Start on time. End on time. Or better yet, end a bit early to allow folks to get to their next appointment on time. We call this the “passing period.” Oh, and some studies have shown that most people perform at their best around 10:00am. Just something to keep in mind. (Wink, wink.)

5. Food. Beautiful food.

Need we say more? Okay, maybe a bit more. We get it, this isn’t always possible. Don’t go breaking your budget over croissants, but if you can provide even just a little snack, it can go a long way. For one, it boosts blood sugar levels. That’s good. Furthermore, humans have an evolutionary affinity to bond over food. (Tip: Avoid extremely crunchy foods. You’re welcome.)

6. Only have people in the meeting who need to be there.

Big meetings make people sad. In one study at Microsoft, they found that what distinguished teams with lower satisfaction scores from the rest was that their meetings tended to include a lot of people. Most of us know how frustrating it is to sit through a meeting that you have as much business being at as a vegan does in Texas. Having people in a meeting that don’t need to be there is distracting, wastes time, dilutes each person’s potential contribution, and makes the real work of meetings (like decision making) more difficult. Invite the essential people. You can even give an optional invite to those folks who don’t need to be there but who might be helpful.  

7. End every meeting with ABCD.

This is a big one. The last 5 to 10 minutes of the meeting should be spent on reviewing the following:

• Action items: What actions have we decided to take once we walk out of this meeting? What do we need to make happen?

• By whens/by whom: Who is taking care of the action items and when will they be completed?

• Communicate items: What was discussed in this meeting that needs to be communicated outside this room? What is the specific message? What should we not be communicating? Who is going to deliver the message? When will the message be delivered? And don’t forget to discuss how you will respond to questions about the message.

• Decisions: What decisions did we make during this meeting? Or did we almost make a decision, but spun around in circles instead, and maybe could we actually just make it right now?

These aren’t all the ingredients of great meetings, but enough to bring some life back into your team gatherings. Meetings don’t have to suck peoples’ souls. Despite all the bad press that they get, we know from experience that meetings can be fruitful and, believe it or not, even engaging and fun! Happy Meeting!