The Secret To Unlock Effective Meetings

90% of employees feel meetings are “costly” and “unproductive.” 

OUCH.

Besides the obvious lengthy monologues, lack of organization/purpose and time suckers this is what we should really be focused on:

Now what?

This question incites immediate urgency to the follow-up steps.

Often meetings can be replaced with an email if there’s not any interaction/participation expected.

Why interrupt someone’s work day if you’re not going to ask for their input?

Most meetings fail because they are poorly planned.

For example, what if you reverse engineered a meeting based on an action plan?

It would result in less meetings, but more purposeful ones.

Based on experience, these following 3 criteria are needed for successful meetings:

1. Purpose - why are you having the meeting?

2. People - who’s voice needs to be heard?

3. Tasks - what are the next steps?

But I promised you at the title of this entry ONE point.

Here it is:

Implement employee ideas/suggestions quickly

(Acknowledging them is not enough)

Does that mean use ALL the ideas shared?

No.

There’s not a number or formula to discern which ones to implement - that’s a decision making process that needs to be refined by leadership.

To understand why I’ll share a negative example of what happens when you don’t.

• I attended leadership meetings at my former company for years on a bi-weekly basis, but something changed on my part after a few months.

• I was one of the most vocal when it came to suggestions to problems, but once I realized the solutions stayed on the “whiteboard” instead of the playing field I stopped speaking up.

You see the quickest way to kill engagement at a meeting is to make it about yourself as the facilitator/leader.

If you truly want buy-in and people to take ownership at your company they have to have skin in the game.

Huh?

They need to feel like partial owners by seeing leadership put other’s suggestions into practice.

• Think about a basketball coach who never listens to the player’s ideas.

• That team is not playing for their coach.

• On the contrary, when a coach empowers their players to take lead, responsibility amongst players becomes infectious.

When meetings are about sharing the collective brainpower in the room great accomplishments will follow.

Promoting buy-in at or organization is like having shares in the company’s stock.

You’re going to be naturally more invested when you have an ownership’s stake at hand.

You may not be in position to give up a percentage of your company to employees, but that’s not the overall point.

What I’m saying is: nothing great is accomplished alone.

Leaders have the power to harness the individual strengths of the team - if you’re willing to.

So before preparing for the next meeting don’t have all the answers planned out.

If you do, just send a memo and don’t waste everyone’s time.

But if you truly want to get the best out of your people at meetings, find ways to implement their ideas in a timely fashion.

Hey, even delegate to them the next steps with some guidance from leadership (I can’t emphasize that latter part enough).

Remember, 90% of employees feel meetings are a waste of time because they are poorly run.

Be part of the 10% who constructs meetings to be exciting, effective and action-driven.

God Bless,

Scott

P.S. Soft skills, such as the topic above, are my sweet spot as a speaker. Listen below to get a peek of what you’ll get when you hire me!