7 practices to increase the effectiveness of your team meetings

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Have you been feeling like your meetings are consuming too much of your time and not being really effective? The answer will probably be a clear 'yes' for many people who are reading this — and I’m not talking only about the pandemic era, as the problem is much older than that, although the pandemic has considerably increased the number of meetings for many teams and, as a consequence, the number of hours spent in unproductive cycles that won’t go anywhere. And please don’t get me wrong: meetings are really important for the health of the team and to make sure people can discuss certain aspects that just don’t work asynchronously, but is a fact that they can become a huge waste of time if we start getting together with no clear goal, or facing too often the famous “meetings that could have been an email”.

I had my own experiences spending hours stuck in meetings that were just not great, and after reading and trying a lot of things, I noticed some practices that could make a difference — maybe not all together, but combining those that make sense for your reality. Some of them would apply more specifically for the person who’s scheduling/leading the meeting, and others can just be followed by every participant.

1. The meeting should have a clear goal. It seems obvious that when someone is taking people’s time for a discussion there is a goal for that, but sometimes this is just not how things go. Does the topic really need to be followed by a discussion, in the first place, or could it just be a written communication (like an email)? What should be discussed and decided? What is the reason why all the people invited should be together?
2. The more crowded it is, the louder it gets. This is one of those situations in which less is more. If you are, for example, in a team of 10 people, it is very likely that in many meetings it wouldn’t be necessary having everyone together, as it can turn a simple topic into a long discussion that won’t go anywhere. In some situations it will certainly make sense gathering all the team members together, but if they are attending every meeting every time, there’s probably something wrong with the way the team is managed.
3. Always define an agenda and stick to it. Having the topics for discussion beforehand, and let the participants aware of them, can definitely save a lot of time. Same thing for information that everyone should know in order to come prepared. For example, there’s a document that everyone should have read in order to discuss about it? Share it in advance. There’s an information that can influence the kind of decision that will be made, and it wouldn’t sound weird sending it by email? Share it in advance. If topics that were not originally part of the agenda come up, another time slot can be scheduled to discuss them (if really necessary), so you don’t have to hold the team/people involved for longer than expected, especially if it’s a recurrent meeting.
4. Someone to lead/facilitate the meeting and keep everyone focused. It’s easy to run away from the main topic and, in a discussion that was supposed to be about the next deliverable and strategies the team will adopt to accomplish it, can turn into a huge discussion about a small detail that didn’t even deserve that much attention, or an argument about something not related to the initial agenda at all. People get distracted and sometimes is easy to just get lost in the middle of it all, so having someone to bring everyone back on track can work well. This person can be the one who scheduled the meeting and is interested in the outcome.
5. Take notes. Especially when important decisions are about to be made, it isn’t safe trusting on everyone’s memory later on. Also, misunderstandings could happen if people have different interpretations during a conversation. Usually, when there is someone taking notes, in case the discussion doesn’t have a very clear closure, the person who’s responsible for it can even encourage the team to make sure of what has been defined so the meeting notes/report can reflect it.
6. Action items are important to visualize the outcome and work on the next steps after the discussion. Depending on the goal of the meeting, chances are good that the people involved will have to perform some tasks in order to make happen what has been decided. Is the team working on a presentation? Discussing about lessons learned? Is this a planning meeting? Does something need to happen after the meeting, in order to achieve the results agreed upon? Having a list of action items, and possibly assigning people to each item already, would make the way more clear and objective to those involved, not to mention the easier follow up.
7. Warm up activities can help. Although for some people it can sound silly or boring, usually the warm up or icebreaker activities before a meeting can help the team members feel more comfortable with each other, relaxed and open for the discussion. This works well in a couple of scenarios, like a retrospective (when there can be some tension eventually), in teams where members are still not so familiar with each other, when the team is meeting after some time and need to get comfortable all together again. Some nice suggestions of icebreakers for both in person or virtual meetings can be found in this link.

Taking these practices into consideration can be a huge improvement for the quality of your team meetings, but of course is also important to analyze whether having all these meetings is really necessary. Having a calendar completely full can be exhausting, demotivating and not productive for many teams, therefore finding out strategies to make asynchronous work be effective in a team can help on reducing stress, and giving space for people to do some things “on their own”, after all, everyone needs some quiet time to get certain things done.

And here goes a bonus: in order to adopt at least a couple of practices mentioned in this article, there are tools that could facilitate the process. Maybe you know, or have already heard about Notion — the tool I’ve been using the most and really enjoying by the way, as it’s really friendly and its templates make things way easier. First of all, there’s already a template for meeting notes in their gallery, which you can also customize to your own needs. However, the standard one will already drive you not only to work on the habit of taking notes every time, but also remember to define and share the goal of the meeting, have an agenda, list the action items at the end and share with the participants.

I hope this article can help you having more productive meetings, or at least be a first step towards it. At the end, since we are all facing a particularly busy calendar, the best we can do is using our time wisely — and everybody else’s!