Matt Gambino Speaking & Training

Your meetings stink!

When I asked my Facebook friends recently what they disliked about corporate meetings, every response was centered around what people do at meetings to make them, well, stink.

So I guess that “Meeters” stink more than Meetings do?

Either way, most of us don’t relish the idea of attending meetings. But there are some ways you can make it a little less painful for your colleagues when you ask them to sacrifice an hour of their lives to visit with you and your glazed doughnuts:

Start strong. Introduce the meeting purpose and the objective first. Or, as Scott Belsky blogs in “How To Make Meetings More Productive In Seven Steps,” you could simply state why everyone is in the room. Don’t bother thanking everyone for attending. Save the thank-you’s for later—after the attendees have completed their action items (on time, of course).

Maintain power. It’s your meeting. You called it. You’re the boss. So start on time, even if there are stragglers who will invariably pull a Jeff Spicoli and waltz in late. It’s their responsibility to catch up.

Spell it out. Give a brief roadmap of how you plan to meet the meeting objective. For example, “First we will discuss A… then we will do B… finally, we will decide on C…” Get buy-in early by asking if you left anything out of the agenda.

Dial early. If you’re dialing people in on speakerphone, get that done 5 minutes before the meeting start time (make sure your remote folks are ready 5 minutes in advance).

Stay the course. When someone starts taking the discussion down a rat hole, revert back to the agenda. For instance, “OK, I want to be respectful of everyone’s time, so let’s focus on wrapping up item ‘B,’ so we can move on to ‘C’ and end the meeting on time. In the meantime, I’ll jot down your point so we don’t forget to pick up the discussion later.”

Stick your neck out. If you ask people to share ideas, have your own ideas on tap to help deal with the inevitable silence when you ask, “Anyone have any ideas?” People love to edit, but they hate to create. So let them shoot your stuff down… at least it will get the conversation started.

Do a smart, rapid recap. The number one reason why meetings fail is that no one remembers what was discussed and decided. When scheduling the meeting, block an extra 30 minutes of alone time immediately after the meeting ends. Mark this time on your calendar as “Recap,” so you know to go over your notes and send a recap within the hour. And use a smart naming convention for the Recap email that includes the meeting name, date, and key words you can search on later. For example, Charter School Opportunity Planning: 8-26-11 Summary and Action Items (Tip: Do an OS or Google Desktop search on the word “Summary” and you’ll pull up all of your meeting recaps in a second).

End on time. Period.

For the Comment board: What tips did I forget? How have you made meetings more bearable?