How to Make Meetings Meaningful

Ask yourself if this scenario seems familiar: You’ve just got out of an hour long meeting and everyone is feeling happy because it seemed to go well and everyone is finally on board with same vision of the project. Then, a week later, in the same meeting with the same people, you’re going over the previous agenda only to find out that no progress has been made on any of the issues discussed. The people who you thought were in charge, thought someone else was in charge and the good feelings of the last meeting have evaporated in a cloud of confusion and frustration.

So how do we go from unprofitable meetings, to meetings that actually contribute to progress? Here are a few tips that can take your meeting from frustration and miscommunication to transparency and shared vision even if you’re not leading the meeting.

1. Know what questions you want answered. Come prepared. If you come to a meeting with a list of questions pertinent to your project, tasks, and goals—then that means you are prepared. You’ve looked over your material, written down what you want to get out of the meeting, and can take intentional notes, and ask questions during the meeting if they aren’t answered.

2. Share notes. Take turns recording the minutes and emailing them to the participants. The best way to develop a shared understanding and create transparency in a meeting is to take the minutes and to share the notes. This way, even though everyone probably heard what they wanted to hear (when they weren’t zoning out), there is a common record for everyone to reference.

3. Create actions that one person is responsible for and assign a deadline. The best way to waste a meeting is to talk about a problem and not assign any one person accountable for it. Sure, there might be a team of people responsible, but it’s important that one person is the representative if there is not a clear leader. If one person has the onus, then you won’t come to the next meeting with the problem of: “I thought they were going to take care of it.” This increases accountability, transparency, and task completion.  Furthermore, concrete action steps need to be created for progress to be made on an issue.  Don’t forget to assign reasonable deadlines. Open-ended tasks have low urgency for completion. If there is a clear deadline, then the team members will know when they can expect an update on the issue.

These are just a few ways that you as a leader or participant in a meeting can take control and start increasing the efficiency of your own work, your team’s, and ultimately your organization. Start with personal preparation and continue with transparency and concrete steps that have ownership and deadlines. This way—instead of feel-good meetings or frustrating meetings—we will have meetings that move us forward toward our shared goals.