Everyone in their daily life at work has been stuck in an unproductive meeting, a bad meeting, or a waste of time meeting. Where the reason for the meeting is unclear, people are few in the meeting or even the problem lies between the person speaking and the listeners.
Unsuccessful meetings are caused by either poor management or a poor strategy for conducting a meeting.
According to Adam Bryant an American author and writer at The New York Times, it may seem like an obvious requirement, but a lot of meetings start with no clear sense of purpose. The meeting’s agenda can be summarised on a handout, written on a whiteboard, or discussed explicitly at the outset, but everyone should know why they’ve gathered and what they’re supposed to be accomplishing.
Tony Mani, Head of Strategy in a construction company, says that meetings should only happen when necessary and not because there is time for it or space.
"Some meetings are unproductive because they happen for the sake of happening, meetings should only happen when necessary, when there is an important thing to discuss, in some companies people prefer to have a meeting once a week or twice a week which really helps because even employees don’t get fed up of the frequent meeting. They should only happen when needed and also they should not be time-consuming,” he says.
Amanda Marebe, an architect, says that some meetings are unsuccessful because the attendants don’t have a clear agenda of what will be discussed in the meeting.
"An agenda of how the meeting will go is very important because it contains, the issues that will be discussed, the ones that were discussed last time, the comments and suggestions. When an employee has no information at all they will either avoid the meeting and the meeting will end with no productive results because some employees weren’t there to contribute,” she says.
Marebe believes that sharing a meeting agenda after each meeting conclusion can change how the employees view the meetings and also generate a positive result.
Aline Uwimana, an art director, says that one of the things that can help a meeting to be successful is to determine the role of each and every one participating in it.
"Clarifying which role everyone will play in the meeting makes it easy because everyone will know what the coordinator of the meeting wants from them or expect from them,” she notes.
Sophia Barron, writer at an American tech company OWL LABS, shares a few tips on how to conduct a successful meeting:
Think through the problem you’re trying to solve
Barron says that "before booking time on anyone’s calendars, spend some time thinking through the problem you’re trying to solve -- and how you’re hoping to collaborate with your colleagues.”
Choose the list of attendees
"Once you’ve determined the meeting you need to run, you need to figure out who needs to be in attendance to have a productive meeting and get started on achieving your goal. If you’re holding a kickoff meeting, or a status update meeting, you may only need one representative from each team or organisation you’re collaborating with,” Barron explains.
Share the conversation with those attending
Barron adds that even if you have important points, dominating the conversation is a meeting taboo. The point of a meeting is to receive feedback from the group, which can’t happen if only one person speaks.
Prepare for follow-up questions
"Nothing is worse than whiffing on an easy follow-up question in a meeting. It’s easy to get caught up in completing your slides for your weekly update deck without preparing for follow-up questions. Be ready to answer the "why,” "how,” and "so what,” of your respective information,” Barron notes.