5 Mistakes You're Making When You Lead Meetings

How to create meetings that people want to go to and that actually drive progress
Think of the last meeting you were in. Was it efficient and focused? Did it lead to great conversations, clear decisions and action items? Did people feel good about the time they spent?
If you're like most people, the answers are "not really." And if you're like most leaders, you don't know how to make your meetings better.
As an executive coach to startups, I have the pleasure and pain of observing hundreds of leaders in thousands of meetings. I basically have a Ph.D. in meetings. Over the years, I've found that one of the main reasons meetings fail is that leaders don't prepare in the right way.
Here are five common ways leaders fail to set up a good meeting, and how you can make sure your meetings are great.

1. Not having a clear goal

This may sound obvious, but in my normal conversations with leaders, they cite the agenda when I ask them what the goal of the meeting is. One question to ask yourself to make sure you have a strong goal: What will be true at the end of the meeting that is not true now? Now make sure you frame that in an infinitive verb: to communicate, to decide, or to sync up on something.

2. Not "priming" your team

Giving your team a way to chew on the topic in advance encourages them to get some data, pull their thoughts together, and get ready for the meeting. The best way to do this is to send pre-work. Send the team something to read or questions to think about in advance about what you're going to cover. This prepares them to participate.

3. Not planning how you will structure your discussion

Unmonitored debates turn into free-for-alls. Status reports tempt people to tune out. One person dominating the meeting crushes the soul. All of these lead up to meetings that get mocked.
Plan how you will ask people to participate. You can schedule some time for free-flowing give and take, but remember to shape the conversation to achieve the goal.

4. Not expecting pushback

One of the ground rules I use when facilitating meetings is "conflict is expected." If everyone agrees on the topic at hand, there is no need to meet. So plan for and even encourage people to say things which are provocative and contrary.
When people get heated, however, conflict can be uncomfortable. The way to handle this is to think through in advance who is likely going to express a contrary point of view. Will they be angry or emotional? Will they refuse the give up even if everyone else sees it a different way?  
Try to anticipate how your employees might overreact and prepare how you will respond to help them express their points of view but not derail the meeting. Mastering conflict is a leadership super power and practice is your key to excellence.

5. Not ending with actions

The quickest way to upgrade your meetings? Plan to end well. When you neglect to end a meeting with clear next steps, owners and timeframes, you are courting chaos.
Your final agenda item should be "wrap up and close." Ensure that you have 10 minutes for this. Use that time to clarify what you have decided in that meeting. Then agree on who will do what, by when. Make sure someone writes this down and sends it out to everyone so that you lock in action items.
When you use this framework to plan your meetings you will increase engagement and also drive forward motion on your key projects, which is really the point of meetings anyway.
Tamer Elsagheer
Skill-Inside

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Make-Or-Break Career Skill No One Talks About

Image
It goes without saying that you have to be responsible and alert to succeed in your career, no matter what your career path is. You have to be reliable, of course, and you have to be a good team member. No one can really act surprised if they miss out on a promotion and their boss says "We all like you, Stan, but you have a tendency to let us down when it matters, and that's not something a supervisor can do. I gave the promotion to Anjali, because I can always rely on her in the clinch." There is another, critical career skill that makes or breaks careers and that we don't talk about as often as we should. It's a muscle that we don't grow just by getting older or by going to school or even by taking on more and more responsibility over time. It is possible to reach a ripe old age without growing this muscle, and it always a shame when that happens. At Human Workplace we call this must-have career muscle "Fast Learning." What does it mean...
Read more

22 Characteristics of High-Potential Employees

Image
  Even if your team is made up solely of supremely talented individuals, there are always a few employees who stand out from the pack.  According to the  Harvard Business Review ,  these high-potential employees  account for an average of 5% of any company’s workforce.  High-potential employees (HiPos) excel in their current roles, but they also possess the skills and knowledge necessary to thrive in managerial positions and senior roles, too. Importance of identifying top talent for employers High-potential employees need to know that you recognize their potential. In fact, a  recent study  showed that 77% of HiPos feel that being recognized as high-potential talent is important to them.  These workers want help in identifying a career path and they also want support in carving that path. For these reasons, it’s critical that managers identify HiPos early on in order to retain them and keep them engaged.  Employers who identify top tale...
Read more

Eight Entrepreneurs Share Their Best Sales Closing Technique

Image
Many people who work in sales face a lot of rejection, especially early in their careers. That’s why there’s no better feeling than closing the deal with a new prospect. As you learn and grow as a salesperson, you start to figure out the most effective techniques for moving a potential lead down the funnel and turning them into a paying customer. We asked members of   Young Entrepreneur Council   to share their best tips for closing a sale, along with anecdotes of how they’ve put it into practice. Here’s what they had to say. 1. Paint A Picture Starring The Customer   The best way to close a sale in my experience is to gather a great deal of information about a customer, tie that information to aspects of a particular product/service, then create a visual in the customer’s head of how implementing this product/service can benefit their lives. This was an extremely effective technique I found in one of my earliest jobs selling cable subscriptions. I would ask ...
Read more