We all love to hate meetings. Yet, when executed effectively, they enhance team unity and harness the collective intelligence of your people.
According to Gallup research, employees whose manager holds regular meetings with them are almost three times as likely to be engaged as employees whose manager does not hold regular meetings with them.
It's time to shift our perspective on meetings and see them as valuable opportunities to maximise our time together. Yet, most managers I work with have fallen into bad habits when it comes to leading an effective team meeting. And it's not their fault.
A common misperception that we have been trained to believe is that every meeting needs a predefined goal.
We plan meetings around what we are going to do such as "to share, to brainstorm, to plan, to decide or to connect."
But have you ever noticed how it's very easy to have a discussion in a meeting that goes nowhere?
Think about the last meeting you were in, did your team share, connect or brainstorm? If you evaluate the success of your meeting, by some type of discussion, then you will erroneously believe that it was successful.
But just talking about stuff doesn't make us efficient.
Have you ever sat down and had a chat with a retiree or someone who has a lot of time on their hands? You can have a very, very long conversation about their trip to the supermarket. And every person they met along the way and every item of food they considered purchasing.
If you assess the chat, based on the length or giving them attention, then you could consider it successful. But what if during the discussion, you uncover that they had been over-charged for item? So that you were able to get them a refund and save them some money.
Then, you would consider that long story worthwhile because you were able to help them. The discussion created a positive outcome.
That's what we need to think about before we have a meeting. We need to flip from solely focusing on what we will be doing in the meeting to the result we want the meeting to produce. Let's face it, talking a lot - doesn't always achieve what needs to get done.
As Mamie Kanfer Stewart says in her book, Momentum, we need to move from seeing meetings as verbs, to nouns. We need to focus on the solution we are going to create in the meetings.
This reframe ensures that you become really clear on the purpose of what you're doing, but also on how to evaluate whether the meeting was worthwhile.
By sharing both the meeting goal and meeting outcome with participants beforehand, you not only provide them with a roadmap of where you're headed but also prompt them to align their thoughts and expectations accordingly.
How to Make Team Meetings Better
Let me take you through what I mean.
Consider a typical meeting objective of "to create a budget for next financial year."
If you consider a budget meeting, there is a lot to discuss. This includes consideration of the previous budget performance, reasons behind any variances, current financial status, company goals, contingency planning and revenue projections. Most times, budget planning meetings run over time and even need several attempts.
In reality, setting the budget, means having a meeting where a series of outcomes are needed over time. Questions to consider are:
Are we considering a list of items to cut from the budget?
Are we needing to talk about budget threats?
Are we attending to vote on the budget?
Are we hear to listen to revenue projections?
To work out the outcome, you want to consider the decisions, the results or the achievements realised from the meeting. To create more tangible, actionable outcomes, consider:
If we achieve [this], will we be successful?
If we work out the next steps for budget planning, will this be a productive use of our time?
If we work out the next steps for budget planning, will this be a productive use of our time?
At the end of this meeting, we will have found a solution to x.
After this meeting, how will things be different?
Scoping out the next two months of meetings and the meeting outcomes per meeting is more efficient and a great focuser for everyone. Rather than coming together regularly and attempting all the different stages in one go.
You can test whether your meeting outcome is any good by assessing whether you are expressing it as a noun, rather than a verb (or a series of verbs).
Here's an example:
Goal: To set the budget for 2025.
Better outcome: At the end of this meeting, we will have agreement on the first quarter budget for 2024.
When we start with a meeting outcome we reverse-engineer what we want to achieve in our meetings. This not only helps us get clear, but it also makes sure that we think about what needs to be discussed in the meeting with the bigger picture in mind.
It also avoids encouraging a "box-ticking" mentality where the end game is to accomplish tasks rather than delivering valuable results.
Working out the meeting outcomes gets us clear on who really needs to attend, so that we don't waste people's time. It also helps us create a better meeting agenda, work out any suitable pre-work or even decide not to meet. Sometimes we are just better off to send a memo.
When we focus on meeting outcomes, we help our people know the bigger picture, so they avoid completing tasks without considering whether those actions are truly impactful.
Better Meetings
Meetings often feel inefficient, but they can be powerful tools for team engagement and productivity when approached with the right mindset.
Avoid the common misconception that meetings should be defined by tasks and goals alone. Instead, advocates focus on meeting outcomes—clear, tangible results that align with the bigger picture. By shifting from verbs (actions) to nouns (outcomes), leaders can ensure that meetings drive real progress.
