Designing Great Meetings
Meetings are the most human part of work. They are also one of the most poorly designed experiences in the modern world.
Some meetings can feel like a big waste of time, but good meetings are very powerful. Good meetings are where we connect with each other, build trust, and nurture our relationships.
Meetings are where individual relationships can be formed, but also where groups of people become teams. These relationships are what let us create something more valuable than the sum of our parts.
We can all design great meetings.
People spend a lot of time in meetings at work. Looking at the research, it looks like most meetings are bad, boring, or redundant. This is because good meetings take work, and a lot of the time we don't put the work in to make all meetings good.
A good meeting is awesome. And we can all create them.
Eight Principles for Great Meetings
In the March 1976 Harvard Business Review issue, British TV Executive Antony Jay wrote:
“Meetings are necessary for all sorts of basic and primitive human reasons, but they are useful only if they are seen by all present to be getting somewhere— and somewhere they know they could not have gotten to individually.”
I recently analyzed articles on good meeting design. I focused on general principles that make meetings more effective and enjoyable. Here are the eight most important principles on meeting design that came from this research.
1. Identify the type of meeting you want to have.
In different meetings, we play different roles and talk about different aspects of work. Identify if a meeting is for making a decision, sharing information, or discussing a problem.
Let everyone coming to the meeting know what to expect. Everyone in the meeting should know what type of meeting they are in.
Here are common meeting types.
Information-sharing meeting: This type of meeting is where information is shared that everyone in the meeting needs to know and may need clarification or questions to understand.
Problem-solving or Discussion meeting: This type of meeting is focused on everyone taking in all relevant information related to a problem and coming up with potential solutions to a specific problem.
Decision-making meeting: This type of meeting is focused on everyone helping present a decision and all relevant information to inform this decision. The whole group can be the decider in a meeting like this or one person can be the decider. It is good for this to be clear.
Framework assessment meeting: This type of meeting is the most meta and focuses on assessing or changing the decision-making process. This type of meeting can include retrospectives, debriefs, and strategy meetings.
2. Define a clear objective for the meeting.
Meetings should have clear objectives and everyone attending should know what the objective of the meeting is. Also, the objective of a meeting should be something that everyone attending deems important. And ideally, you leave the meeting completing the objective of being closer to completing the objective.
3. Get the right people in the room.
It is important to invite the right people to the meeting. Make sure that everyone invited should be participating in the meeting and find the meeting objective important. Meetings are most effective with less than eight people in attendance so try to make the meeting as small as possible so everyone can participate.
4. Create and share an agenda doc.
Before a meeting, create a shared agenda doc. An agenda doc can be as short as you would like. The agenda could be one sentence. By sending it out beforehand, you help make sure everyone is on the same page when they walk into the room (or Zoom). Good agenda docs give people an idea of why the meeting is happening, what the meeting is about and the items to cover in the meeting. Ideally, it should be sent out giving attendees enough time to read it.
5. Be on time.
Being on time for a meeting shows other attendees that you view the topic of the meeting as important and that you respect the time of the people you work with. By showing up late, you are communicating the opposite - that either the topic or the attendee’s time is not important. This is probably the easiest tip that people do not follow.
6. Be present and listen.
Studies have shown that a massive percentage of people multitask in meetings. And more people multitask in virtual meetings. Being present for a meeting means you are putting your entire attention on the people you are meeting with and the topic at hand. Listening during a meeting means that you are making everyone feel heard, you are taking into account their perspective and experience, and learning for yourself.
7. Make it interactive and be inclusive.
For meetings to be enjoyable, they have to be engaging for all participants and should invite everyone’s participation. With known bias in the workplace, it is critical to make sure everyone feels included in meetings. This ensures both diversity of perspectives in the conversation and can help ensure that attendees enjoy the meeting.
8. Take notes and share the next steps
Suppose you had a very successful meeting that all attendees enjoyed and that accomplished the decided-upon objective. You don't want to lose all that great work. Take notes of important information covered in the meeting. Identify the next steps from the meeting and share the notes and next steps with the attendees.
Wrap Up
The funny thing about meetings is that they are not complicated. I bet after reading this, this couldn’t seem more obvious to some. And yet, in my experience, things like meeting objectives and meeting types aren’t always perfectly clear.
These eight principles were what was found throughout my research. I hope at least serve as a reminder of good things to keep in mind when planning your next meeting.
Cheers to blog #3, thanks for reading! Stoked to keep sharing with you all.
This newsletter is sponsored by → Oco Crew
This newsletter is written by Ben Sterne.