For the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of assisting one of our pastors in facilitating soft skills modules for seminary students at our church through a NXTGEN Pastors Cohort. Recently, we covered the module “How to Run a Meeting”.
Attending poorly organized and managed meetings “weakens me”, and to be honest, it can be rare when we attend a well-run meeting. The bad news is that I’ve attended a lot of meetings at work, in professional organizations and church. Marcus Buckingham defines an activity that weakens us as one that drains us, bores us and is something on our calendars that we don’t look forward to. For many of us, meetings fall into that category. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Patrick Lencioni has said:  “Bad meetings are the birthplace of unhealthy organizations and good meetings are the origin of cohesion, clarity and communication. Your meetings are a barometer of everything else.”

We spend a lot of time in meetings, and they are very important. Crucial decisions are made in meetings. But they are also costly. One time our leader set up a timer and calculator (with our average pay rate per hour of all the leaders in the room) which showed the cost of the multiple hour meeting. He set it on the table and we watched the costs build up. The result was staggering, giving me an appreciation for the cost of meetings.

We should recognize that there are several types of meetings – from daily “Stand Up” meetings to monthly staff, “One on One”, meetings to quarterly “Off-Site” strategic planning meetings. If you are responsible for the meeting, be considerate of the attendees’ time. For example, if you are just passing along information, perhaps an email would suffice. I worked with a meeting facilitator, who would give her attendees the “gift of time” if the session finished early, rather than filling up the time after the goal of the meeting was accomplished. Consider doing the same, rather than just filling up the time with small talk.

One other thought to consider is that not everyone will get their way in a decision agreed to in a meeting. Everyone should get the opportunity to share their thoughts, but once a decision is made, the group needs to leave the meeting with a united front, and individuals should not complain to others about the decision that was reached.

So, what can we do to avoid creating meetings that weaken others? Here are 5 simple suggestions to help you have better meetings:

1. First, identify a clear leader of the meeting. This is the person who is accountable for planning and leading a well-managed meeting.
2. Second, have a clear purpose for the meeting. Everyone is busy and should know why the meeting needs to be held in the first place. I worked with a leader who will often ask, “What problem are we trying to solve here?” That’s a great question and one we should keep in mind when planning meetings. If you don’t have enough content to cover in the meeting or the communication can be done via email, cancel the meeting and respect your attendees by giving them the time back to focus on other priority items.
3. Third, develop an agenda for the meeting. This would include a clear starting and ending time. Request agenda topics ahead of time, including the specific person assigned to that topic, and the amount of time they will need for their topic. If in the meeting you find that a topic is going to take longer than expected, adjust the agenda (not the length of the meeting) to accommodate the need for additional time. You may have to delay discussion on some topics so that you can devote time to the topics that have the higher priority. At times, you may also have to make the decision to take discussions that will need more time, off-line.
4. Fourth, recap items that have been agreed on. How many times do you leave a long meeting and not really know what the outcome was, or what the next steps were? I think that happens a lot. Patrick Lencioni helpfully suggests that at the end of every meeting take a few minutes to ensure that everyone is walking away with the same understanding about what has been agreed to and what they are committed to.
5. Follow-up. Those items that were agreed upon above will often result in “Action Items”. Unless you are intentional, those items can be forgotten. Develop a document that will list the item, who it has been assigned to, when it is due, progress updates, etc.

These are just 5 suggestions I have to help you to. Meetings are necessary for many reasons, so let’s make the ones we run the very best.

What suggestions do you have to add to this list?