273: How to Run Effective Meetings

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:00]:

If there are two things that we could really change about work to reimagine how work gets done, I think those two things would be meetings and emails. And I’m sure if you’re listening to this podcast, you absolutely agree with me. When I think about meetings, I think about back to back zoom meetings. I think about an even longer to do list after we’ve come out of the meeting. And I think about how poorly they are often run as well. It means that the real work has to get done in the evenings and on the weekends. If that sounds like you, today’s episode is absolutely for you. It’s all about rethinking how meetings get done, rethinking how we work when it comes to meetings.

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:47]:

This is the award winning Happier at Work podcast where we reimagine how work gets done. I’m your host, Aoife o’, Brien, a career and culture strategist for global leaders and teams in. In today’s episode, I’m taking you through a framework to rethink meetings that you have or that you’re considering setting up. So the first question I’m always going to ask is, does this need to be a meeting? So there are so many tools that we have at our disposal. We have Slack messages, we have email. That’s probably going to be a completely separate episode, but we have all of these other tools. And yet oftentimes the default is let’s make a meeting, let’s set up a meeting to talk about that, to share information, whatever it might be. But the default often is we need to have a meeting about that, when so often it doesn’t actually need to be a meeting at all.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:44]:

And so many times you hear, you know, the meme. I can hear the meme in my head now. That meeting really could have been an email. So it really depends on what you’re trying to achieve. When considering whether something should be a meeting, you can think about it in a few different ways. So what is the purpose? Like, why are we bringing people together to meet? What is the purpose behind it? And I’ll talk more about the different kinds of purpose for meetings in a minute. You can also think about, well, who really needs to be there? Do we need to have the whole team? Do we need to have only very specific people? And this will tie in with the purpose if we need to make a decision, do we need to have absolutely everyone there, or do we need to only have a handful of people there, for example? You can also consider whether it needs to be done in real time. So could you have an asynchronous conversation? So that just means not in real time.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:38]:

It means that you need to wait to get a response from other people. Whether you do that through Slack, whether you do that via email, however you want to do that. But do you really need to have people together talking about this in real time, or can you wait for a response? And the last thing I want you to think about, and I saw this, it went viral a few years ago when Shopify calculated exactly how much it costs to bring people together and put them in a meeting. So if you think about it like this, what is someone’s annual salary and therefore what is their hourly rate? And if you have them in a meeting for an hour, and if you have five people or 10 people, how much is that actually costing the business? And is that good value? So did we make a decision? Was it merely sharing information or was that good value for the business, bringing all of those people together for an hour? The second thing I want you to do, and I’ll talk a little bit more about this, because I’m going to give you a bit of homework. You know me, I like to be really practical. I like you to take something that you can actually put into place and make some changes, rather than just feeling inspired and thinking, I must do something about that. So it’s to look at all of the current meetings that you have. And I know, you know, I remember back from my corporate days, the recurring meetings that we have, whether the team meetings, the regular updates, the wider team, all of those things, and really audit.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:09]:

What do you have currently on your list? Ask the tough questions. Are the right people there? Can we uninvite people? And if you haven’t listened, I must mention this previous episode, if you haven’t listened to Lisa Bodell’s episode all about simplifying our work, then I would definitely go and check that out. She calls it a badge of honour to be uninvited from a meeting. I think so often we put this grand perception of importance around being invited to meetings. But actually, when you get uninvited to meetings, it frees up time to do the real work. And I’m sorry to say that oftentimes that means you have to do a bit of thinking about, well, what is it that I can do in this extra free time that I have? You can ask the questions about time, about, does this really need to be the length that it is? Does it need to be at the cadence that it’s currently happening? Can we extend it? Can we do it every two weeks instead of every week, for example. And then another thing that you can do is experiment. So why not try out how things are going? Why not try doing it every two weeks instead of every week? Why not try uninviting some people to the meeting and see how it goes and see do they need to be brought in or maybe they need to be brought in less frequently.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:32]:

So experimenting with these kinds of things can free up other people’s times to get the real work done. Okay, so if you have decided that something does need to be a meeting and you want to set up a new meeting, or you want to rethink the existing meetings that you have, it’s so important to structure those meetings really, really well. So first of all have a proper agenda. Why is it that we’re here, what is going to be talked about? And if you can include timelines around that so that when you’re running the meeting, you can make sure that you’re sticking to time and that you’re not going to run over at the end or Scrabble at the end. For aob, for any other business. You need to also decide the type of meeting that this is going to be. Is it a discussion, is it a decision that you have to make, or is it merely for information? And again, if I think back to my times running team meetings, it’s just kind of a get together and sharing updates about what’s going on. So that’s kind of more informational, but it’s also a really great way to connect as a team.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:42]:

If I think back, I definitely could have run those team meetings better and I could have put more structure around it and think about how often we need to do it and maybe try and tighten it up a little bit so that’s not taking an hour out of everyone’s time every week and that it’s not just a task update to see what people are working on. You also need to have roles assigned. So who is going to be the person who keep things on track? Who’s going to be the facilitator, who’s going to be the person who’s taking notes if a decision needs to be made? Who are the people who are making that decision and are they the only ones in the room? Or are there more people in the room who need to be involved in the discussion before the decision? If there’s anything that needs to be presented, any information that needs to be shared, rather than delivering a presentation during the meeting itself, share it in advance and make sure that people read any pre material that you have shared. So whether that is a presentation deck, whether it’s a one pager that they need to read in advance, and again, if you’re sending this kind of stuff, make it really easy for people to do it. How many times have you showed up to a meeting where you haven’t actually read the pre material and you’re just kind of winging it? So bear that in mind as well. So on to meeting hygiene. And the important thing here is to be really respectful of people’s time. So if you are having a 55 minute meeting, for example, instead of an hour, or you’re reducing from an hour to 50 minutes or an hour to 45 minutes, make sure to start on time and make sure to end on time.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:19]:

And I think having an agenda, especially with times against those, really helps you to be able to do that. But be really respectful of people’s time. How many times have you arrived, whether it’s in a zoom meeting or whether it’s an in person meeting and you’re like, oh, we’ll just wait two or three minutes to get started until everyone gets settled down. What difference would it make if you just started on time, showed people that you mean business and that you definitely are going to start exactly on time and you’re going to therefore finish on time and it’s not going to bleed into to the next meeting that people need to attend. Make sure you have someone who’s actively facilitating it and keeping things on track. So making sure that there’s no kind of tangents going on, that something else completely different has cropped up. If you capture something like that or if you notice that something like that is happening, why not jot it down and say, well, we can include that in our any other business at the end of the meeting. Another really important thing to do is to create psychological safety.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:21]:

Make sure that people feel really open about speaking and sharing what’s going on for them. And it’s not just the loudest voices that get heard. Make sure that people feel included. And you know, this kind of works both ways. But if you want to have a conversation with people who are a little bit quieter in the meetings, typically to make sure that they know that it’s okay to speak up and equally ask them if there’s anything that they would like to add and ask permission in advance if they’re usually quiet, that you can get them involved in the conversation as well. Because for some people to be put on the spot like that is really awkward and Embarrassing. So having those kinds of conversations in advance to make sure that everyone feels included and it’s okay to speak up will make a huge difference to hearing those voices, to who are less heard in those meetings. And I’m sure you like I have been at those meetings where it’s the same voices again and again and it’s the same opinions and it’s the loudest voices that get heard.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:24]:

So making sure to include everyone and make sure that everyone has the opportunity to share what’s going on for them in a way that suits them. Another thing to consider, and this wasn’t a huge issue when I still worked at corporate, but since the pandemic and a move to remote and hybrid working, there’s a lot of people who are, who are working online when we’re having meetings. And so it’s thinking about how best to structure that. There’s a couple of different ways that you could do it. So are you having an in person in the office and other people are dialing in, and I know there’s some brilliant technology out there that allows you to do that really effectively, or are you deciding that if there’s anyone who is not in the office, then we’re all dialing in and we’re going to do it via Zoom, via Google Meets, whatever it might be. So using that technology that you have, whether it is gathering together in person and having others dial in, or everyone dials in separately, although on a separate note, you might find that people start complaining, why am I going to the office just to sit in Zoom meetings? Now we come on to the meeting actions, and this is, I think, the bugbear of a lot of people. So you’ve had this discussion, maybe you’ve made a decision, you, you’ve shared some information, but what are the actions to come out of all of that work that you’ve done? And how is that being assigned? How is that actually being followed up? So you need to first of all agree who is doing it, what are they doing and by when are they doing it, what’s the deadline associated with it. You need to document this on an ongoing basis to capture all of those tasks and make sure that they’re being done and that they’re being followed up on as well.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:10]:

Otherwise, if this isn’t happening, then they’re not actions, they’re just wishes that we wish things could get done, but we’re not actually keeping track and we’re not following up to make sure that they get actioned. Another, maybe slightly controversial idea is to start on the work while you’re still in the room. So are there some things that you can start doing immediately during the meeting or if you have a little bit of time after the meeting, you, you’re still all going to be together at the same time. You can collaborate better, you can ask questions. It will save time further down the line where there’s no back and forth about well, what was agreed or what are you doing, or can you check this. If you start to do the work while you’re still in the room, it also means that when you leave, you’re not going to have a whole load of extra to do items on your list aside from what it is that you already have outside of the meeting. The last point I want to talk about is this idea of follow through. So I touched on the idea of having an action log being able to capture those.

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:14]:

You don’t have to have an update every time you have the meeting, but make sure it’s relevant. So when is the deadline or is the deadline approaching and can you get an update on that? You can also use that so people can review in advance of the meeting. They don’t necessarily have to talk about it during the meeting, but if it’s being updated by people regularly, then you have an idea of how you are, whether you’re on track or whether someone needs additional support to get something over the line. Another thing, and I kind of touched on this idea earlier, is to regularly review the meetings that you have as well. So you know it’s not just a one and done, it’s regularly thinking about the kinds of meetings that you have and putting those things in place to make sure that there’s a clear purpose, that people know why they’re meeting, that there’s clear actions to come from it. But they are also looking at the length of the meeting and the cadence of it and who is actually being invited to those meetings. And I think if you put in place some of the things that I talked about today, people will be so grateful to have that additional time back in their day to get their actual work done and not just be in meetings and getting additional action items to add on to their to do list. I did mention at the start that I had some homework for you as well.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:34]:

So I want you to think about meetings as a tool like any other thing that you have at work, that it’s something that we can use to get work done or to talk or to decide or to share information. I want you to audit the meetings that you currently have. This is not about setting up new meetings. It’s about having a look at, well, what did I have in the last seven days? What do I have in the next seven seven days in terms of meetings? And think about how can I shorten those? How can I streamline the meetings that I have? Is there a way to make them more efficient, to make them shorter, or to make them more relevant to the people who are attending? And are there any meetings that I can actually stop? Whether it’s stop the meeting totally or stop attending that meeting as an attendee, because I don’t need to be there. I really hope you enjoyed today’s episode and took some specific action points for it in relation to meetings. It’s something I think I’m really passionate about is this idea of how do we. How do we do work better? And meetings is one of the big things that gets in the way because it causes so much busyness for us. If you want to reach out to me directly, you can always get me on podcastappieratwork, ie.

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:50]:

And I’d love to hear from you. If you’re a longtime listener, listener, or a new listener to the podcast, I’d really appreciate a rating or a review on your favorite platform. If we’re not already connected, you’ll find me most actively on LinkedIn, and I look forward to connecting with you there.