Meetings, too often time-consuming and sometimes costly, are nevertheless useful for bringing teams together and making decisions. According to studies carried out in the field and in the laboratory, they are not a sign of poor company organization and it would be illusory to want to eradicate them. On the other hand, solutions exist to improve them. Here is advice from two eminent specialists.
For more productive meetings, the American billionaire sets out six principles:
1. Avoid large meetings. They discourage debate. People are more reserved than open.
2. Leave a meeting if you’re not contributing. Your presence is useless. It is not rude to leave a meeting. But it’s rude to waste people’s time.
3. Forget the hierarchical chain. Communicate directly with your colleagues. Not through supervisors or managers. Fast communicators make quick decisions. Fast decisions = competitive advantage.
4. Be clear, not clever. Avoid nonsense words and technical jargon. They slow down communication. Choose concise, precise words that are easy to understand.
5. Give up regular meetings. Instead, send text messages or emails. Use meetings to: collaborate, tackle problems head on, resolve pressing issues.
6. Use common sense: If a company rule does not contribute to progress or does not apply to your situation, avoid following it blindly. Do not follow the rule, but the company’s goals.
1. Prepare for a meeting
-Only hold a meeting when it is truly necessary. Leaders should cancel the meeting if the topic has already been discussed, if the purpose of the meeting can be resolved otherwise (for example, by email) and if the necessary people are absent.
– Invite the essential people for the meeting and those whose presence contributes to their professional development.
– Collect input from participants before the meeting, to include them in the process.
– Provide the agenda in advance, prioritize items and set a duration.
– Find an environment and use new tactics (standing meeting, walking). Find a space outside of the usual meeting room.
2. Conduct a meeting
– Distribute roles to each participant, based on rotation of responsibilities.
-Ensure participants are on time, by preventing latecomers from entering the room or speaking to them after the meeting.
– Leverage technology to include necessary employees, even if they are not physically present.
– Do not allow the use of personal electronic devices. Leave them in a box before entering the room or turn them off.
– Start the meeting using mindfulness techniques [by being attentive to everything that is experienced in the present moment, Editor’s note], even if it is only for three minutes.
– Ask participants how they are doing. Show them that you have an interest in their well-being.
– Start the meeting by breaking the ice. Asking what the best movie is right now can encourage creativity. Help participants who are angry at being in a meeting to break away from what they were doing by offering them snacks or putting on music. People in a good mood are more engaged and more likely to absorb information.
– Show appreciation for participants’ contributions.
– Display a cost calculator on screen to determine the need for the meeting.
-Encourage participation. Use techniques such as role-playing. Limit the number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation.
– Bring anti-stress objects (modeling clay, ball) and tools to improve concentration (scribble notebook).
– Plan short breaks to go to the toilet, drink, use your smartphone.
– Use humor to make the meeting more lively and break tensions.
– Develop an agenda of questions rather than statements.
– Use technologies (split screen, document sharing) to allow participants to take notes and react in real time.
– To keep people focused and ready to participate, randomly distribute participants’ speaking opportunities via an app.
– Ask for feedback from those who don’t feel comfortable or who may be overshadowed by other participants.
– Play or encourage participants to play devil’s advocate in certain discussions. Create a favorable environment for the expression of opposing opinions.
– Redirect tactfully, keeping them aside for other meetings, off-topic or otherwise sterile conversations.
– Respect the planned time limit, if possible. Allocate speaking time for agenda items if participants tend to get carried away and dwell on the smallest details.
– Recognize contributions beyond that of the leader.
– Throughout the meeting, collect contributions and vote on ideas to move forward as efficiently as possible, using Clickers technology, which allows you to interact anonymously.
3. Close a meeting
– End the meeting on time and do not keep participants beyond the time defined in the meeting invitation.
– End meetings once all agenda items have been discussed. Do not try to fill the remaining time with other questions.
– Distribute tasks so that everyone is satisfied. Ensure that everyone understands what they are responsible for and the expectations that result from this.
– Provide a summary of the meeting to allow participants to reflect on it.
– End the meeting on a positive note, for example by offering lunch to participants to continue the discussion.
4. Evaluate the meeting experience
Tools allow this, such as Roti (“Return On Time Invested”): an evaluation application that provides an assessment of the value or usefulness perceived by participants, with regard to the time invested . Or the Meeting Cost Calculator (available only in dollars and in English): based on the duration of the meeting, the number of participants and the amount of their salary, it calculates an estimate of the cost of the meeting. Finally, the reunionometer, in euros and French, in web version only.
5. Organize a meeting
-Reduce their length and frequency if possible. Meetings lasting more than two and a half hours expose you to the risk of inhaling carbon dioxide, a gas which, present in high quantities in the blood, makes you anxious and impairs cognitive functions.
– Establish a lateness policy at all levels of the organization, applicable uniformly without hierarchical distinction.
– Set a specific day and time for meetings or no meetings.
-Define and enforce what is considered an appropriately sized meeting. In a seven-member decision-making meeting, the inclusion of a new person reduces the chance of reaching a decision by 10%.
– To reduce spectators without creating a feeling of exclusion, several techniques exist: dividing the agenda items, which allows two shorter meetings; bringing people in at a certain time and for a certain time; collect in advance the contributions of the auxiliaries which will be presented during the meeting.
– Plan “unusual lengths,” 50 or 48 minutes, rather than the traditional 60 minutes. It attracts attention, increases stress, is good for performance, and allows you to take breaks.
– Everyone in the organization should be aware of and understand meeting expectations. Rules and expectations should be posted on the door where the meeting is being held.
-Provide appropriate training to those in management and non-management positions.
– Provide participants with solid feedback on how the meeting was held. Collect reactions from external observers. Record meetings and use this information for training leaders.
-Encourage the leader to be innovative and try new meeting practices as new learning opportunities. Example: replace brainstorming with brainwriting (or cerebral writing) to generate ideas and prioritize them, before sharing them in a meeting, then voting or discussing them. This silent practice generates more and better ideas than when participants interact with each other.
* Steven Rogelberg is a global specialist in meeting science, also a consultant for companies like Google, Facebook, Cisco and the United Nations.
