Podcast — Running a Meeting Worth Attending

We've all been in meetings that wasted our time and didn't seem to achieve anything.

The average person attends 10 meetings or more per week and spends 31 hours in unproductive

meetings per month. Make your meetings productive and useful for all attendees.

I share 9 tips on how to run great team meetings so that you and your team can use the meeting

time even more productively, get more useful actions out of the meeting and push your team's

performance up another gear.

My name is Jess Coles and I've spent 25 years working in corporates and household names

through to SMEs at all management levels. And I've attended countless meetings, run

meetings from one-to-ones and team meetings through to board meetings. A well-run meeting

makes a huge difference in terms of how you view the meeting but also in terms of the

outputs you get from the meeting. If you're new to this channel, enhanced.training provides

online business courses to help professionals, managers and business owners improve their

team and business performance. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up

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So my first tip on how to run a great team meeting is to prepare a specific meeting agenda

in advance and circulate to attendees. Preparing an agenda is common advice, yet way too many

meetings have static agendas, vague agendas or no agendas. Be clear in your own mind

what the meeting is for. If for instance is it information sharing or discussion and problem

solving or decision making or a combination of two or more of these. Pose each agenda

item as a specific question for the attendees to answer during the meeting. This ensures

they know exactly why they're there and can mentally start preparing before the meeting.

Make sure all those are invited to attend will contribute to each agenda item and have

input into the work being undertaken. To learn more, take a look at our video on how to set

a meeting agenda and there's a link above and also in the description below.

My second tip on how to run a great meeting is to agree the rules of the meeting up front

with the attendees. By getting all attendees involved in setting the rules of how to behave

in the meeting, input, buy-in and peer pressure helps everyone stick to them. This nearly

always works better than trying to impose what you think the rules should be on the

attendees because they are your rules and not theirs. Popular rules include if firstly

turn up to the meeting on time, second go through all the pre-reads well before the

meeting, third turn your mobile phones on to silent and keep them in your pockets and

not on the desk, fourth only have one person talking at one time and let them finish talking

before the next person starts, fifth follow the agenda, don't go off on tangents or ignore

the time constraints, sixth allow time for questions and discussion. Try to avoid a meeting

of presentations or information sharing only and seventh attack the problem not the person.

Obviously choose rules that make sense and are practical and are agreed by the team.

My third tip on how to run a great team meeting is to have one person in charge of facilitating

the meeting. This could be you or it could be a member of the team or even a non-participating

person tasked with facilitation particularly for the larger or more formal meetings. Some

of the key tasks for the person facilitating might include keeping the meeting focused

on one item at a time, help everyone to participate in the meeting for instance limiting those

that talk a lot and helping the quieter members add their contribution. The facilitator should

also help the group deal with conflicts and differing opinions in a constructive way.

And fourth they should clarify and summarise points to ensure everyone's understanding,

fifth check for group members agreement and ensure clear decisions are made and sixth

ensure action points are clear and are recorded. And for smaller and informal meetings the

meeting organiser will often take some or all of the facilitation responsibilities.

My fourth tip on how to run a great team meeting is to keep the meeting focused on discussion,

collaboration and problem solving and decision making. The quality of decision making in

my experience is greatly improved when each member of the team debates, challenges and

probes the proposed solution or each of the possible solutions. This is very much the

many minds are better than one approach. The debate in a group situation sparks new ideas

and solutions as people feed off each other as well. It is much cheaper and quicker to

have a proposed solution challenged from all angles while it is an idea and make changes

rather than starting to implement it only to find some major problems. This is why it's

so valuable to get the group together and focus on discussion, collaboration and problem

solving and decision making. The better plans and solutions usually come from good debate

and challenge. My fifth tip on how to run a great team meeting is to keep to a small

number of attendees. The larger the group in the meeting the less participation you

tend to get from those attending and the more the meeting becomes an information sharing

exercise. If you intend for the meeting to be a discussion, problem solving and decision

making meeting then keep the number of participants to under ten ideally and five or under is

even better. With small numbers you find a higher quality of discussion and debate and

quicker decision making. My sixth tip on how to run a great team meeting is to promote

openness and honesty. Being open and honest in meetings is about everyone saying what

they think and feel rather than just saying what they think their boss wants to hear.

For your team members to do this they need to trust you and each other. If there is a

lack of trust you will struggle to get good discussion and debate which is likely to reduce

the quality of decisions that are being made. There are lots of ways to build trust with

team members. Some pointers include make sure you do what you say and your actions

and words are consistent. Be open and honest in how you deal with your team, praise more

than you criticise and ask your team members for input, actively listen and then take action

on that input. You are the leader and you set the tone and the culture. My seventh tip

on how to run a great team meeting is to ask for feedback on the meeting. I know this

seems like an obvious one yet very few meetings end with that two or three minutes spent on

getting the team's assessment of the meeting. Here are some of the questions that you could

pose to your team to get feedback on the quality of the meeting. My eighth tip on how to run

a great team meeting is to capture notes or minutes of the meeting and share these. Ask

a team member to take minutes or notes of what is being discussed in the meeting. This

saves everyone being distracted as they write their own notes and the minutes can be shared

with non-attendees to help promote an open culture. Make sure the minute taker captures

at least the key actions that need to be done after the meeting, who will do each action

and the time frames they have to do the action. A note or minute taker helps everyone participate

in the meeting much more fully. My ninth tip is focus on what to do after each meeting

and that is to follow up on action items. Following up is such an important task to

ensure that each action item is completed by the deadlines agreed. Following up does

take a bit of extra time and effort yet the benefits massively outweigh this investment.

So there you have my nine tips for running effective and useful meetings at work. Many

people know some or even all of this list yet don't put them into action. Don't follow

their example. Put these tips into action and run better meetings. Your team and your

career will thank you for it. And as always if you like this video please hit the thumbs

up button below and subscribe. Thanks for watching and speak to you soon.