Maximizing Meetings: 4 Proven Strategies to Address the Most Common Team Meeting Mistakes

Do you find yourself dreading team meetings at work? If so, you're not alone. The thing is, it's not necessarily the meetings themselves that we dislike, but rather the poorly managed and unproductive ones. So let's fix our meetings!

In this video, I share four proven strategies to address some of the most common issues in meeting management. Implement these practical solutions to start having more efficient and effective meetings that team members actually enjoy attending.

• Read the video transcript

  There's a perception out there that people don't like meetings at work. But I think the real issue is that we don't like bad meetings, unproductive meetings that feel like time wasters. A well-designed and facilitated meeting, actually, it makes things so much more efficient in our work.

  And so today I want to talk about four of the most common issues, problems that I see in meeting management and how to avoid them.

  So the first one is a lack of preparation. Oftentimes, we've got this regular meeting on our calendar and we all just kind of show up and wait to see what's going to be brought forth that day. If we want to maximize the time that we have together in that meeting, likely some sort of pre-work would be helpful. So if you are running the meeting, think in advance what could I have people even just think about before this meeting? Maybe you send a question for them to think about before coming to the conversation. Or maybe there's actually some tangible prep work that needs to happen to make that time together more efficient.

  The second challenge that I see is often managers are running the meeting. And did you know that about 62% of employees say that their managers dominate the discussion in team meetings? I don't think this is necessarily just because managers want to hear their own voice, I think it kind of comes out of nerves and wanting to make sure we're giving value to our employees during the meeting. But guess what? Your employees actually want an opportunity to chime in more in these discussions. So managers stop dominating the discussion and pass the mic.

  The third one really connects to number two, and that's a lack of engagement in the meetings, people don't feel engaged in the conversation, in what's happening. So a couple of thoughts here. One, kind of based on two, ask more questions, and hold more space for people to have rich dialogue during the meeting. And then, two, remember that if you are responsible for the meeting, that doesn't mean you need to present everything during the meeting. Beforehand, think about what parts of this agenda can I pass to someone else? Who could come up with an idea of something that needs to be presented? Whose work could we really put a spotlight on and they could come share with the team? Even just the icebreaker, right? Like, let's say you want to start the meeting with an icebreaker, you don't always have to plan it. Assign that to somebody else, so they can use their creativity to come up with something and they can be actively involved in the meeting.

  And then the last challenge that I see, well, the last of many, but the last of the four that we'll discuss today is lack of follow-up. We take this time to come meet, have discussion, and then nothing happens after. There's not much more frustrating than that, okay? So have somebody in the room responsible for noting the the discussion points, and in particular, have them note the decisions made and the corresponding actions that should take place thereafter and who's responsible. So they're really noting the next steps or the action items during the meeting. And at the end of the meeting, give them an opportunity to report that back to everyone, so we all hear it, then they send it out after, and then in the next team meeting, the next week or in two weeks, we pull that out, and we follow up on the action items that were determined in the last meeting. That way, you know you are not missing follow-up on key decisions.

  There you have it, four strategies to attack some of the most common issues that we see in team meetings, so that you can get rid of bad meetings and start to really master the art of facilitating an effective team meeting.