Meeting Culture

Get more from your meetings in a shorter time! Does the meeting culture in your company require some tweaks? Are you spending too much time in meetings with little time for “work” and actions? Does this sound familiar?

As ever there is an opportunity to change the way we work and the current situation is forcing many of us to work differently. Meetings can be very productive and offer each person an opportunity to further understand progress and the requirements of the task however quite often an array of meetings can take over your diary.

• Understand the requirement for you to attend the meeting, why do you need to be there? Is it a comfort invite by the meeting organiser? Are you a stakeholder and is this is an easy way of making you feel involved – challenge the need to attend. Are you required to make any decisions? Would a short inform of any outcomes/actions be sufficient?

• When holding meeting virtually it is very easy for invitees to be doing other tasks and not concentrating – this happens less when there is a clear structure to the meeting, regular summaries and actions confirmed with minutes. If you are using Teams to hold the virtual meeting a member of the team can add the minutes as you make progress. Keep the meeting moving with energy and ask others to summarise.

• Start each meeting with

  • Purpose and outcome - tell all attendees why they are invited and what is the desired outcome/decisions required

  • Review of previous actions and challenge actions not complete. What is the impact on others of actions not complete? Ask the question politely as appropriate, hold others to account!

  • Discuss the content of the task, agree actions/make decisions and assign responsibilities clearly

  • Confirm required output and timescales and date of next meeting

  • Close meeting and diarise next meeting with actions copied and pasted for clarity.

• Aim for all meetings to close early! Set the calendar invite for 30 mins or 60 mins but aim to complete within 25 or 50 mins to allow the invitees time to plan actions, take a comfort break or get a cuppa! They will all enjoy your meetings much more and this will encourage attendance.

Delivering Differently can observe and give feedback to meetings (virtual meetings too) to ensure the desired changes can be adopted easily by the team. we can support you in the changes you wish to make but you may feel uncertain on the next steps – set up a free 30-minute discovery call and see how you can develop you and your team