Meeting hygiene tips: 5 ways to stop long, pointless meetings

There’s little more irritating than endless meetings that seem unnecessary or just plain too long. Time is money, people! Whether it’s a meeting with employees, teams, stakeholders or clients, good meeting hygiene is essential to avoid long and pointless meetings, writes time management expert and global business advisor, Kate Christie.

I was recently asked to facilitate a meeting between a group of investors and a new startup they were partnering with. We had a board table full of esteemed folks, there was a virtual room full of more esteemed folks, and there was even one esteemed gent who had dialled in to the meeting on his mobile from a boat in Sweden at 2am Swedish time. Needless to say, the tension in the actual room, the virtual room, and, no doubt, the galley of the boat were palpable.

The stakes were high. The stakeholders were tired and stressed and sick of talking in circles. Everyone wanted a win. Today.

I received a call from my client two days earlier asking if I could facilitate the meeting. I am a time management expert and coach, and I consult to high-performing individuals and teams to help them manage their time well and to achieve excellent business outcomes. I was briefed on the dispute, the dollars at stake, the stakeholder profiles and the roadblocks. I was briefed on the nature of the new business, the positions of the parties and the areas for possible compromise.

All of which was incredibly fascinating, but the central question for me was this: How have the meetings between the parties been conducted to date?

This was key because, regardless of background and dollars and people and inventions and whatever else was at stake, if the parties had not established the rules of engagement up front, then they were never, ever going to be able to reach a winning outcome.

Top 5 good meeting hygiene tips

In the ordinary course of business, good meeting hygiene is important, but when it comes to scenarios involving very high stakes, good meeting hygiene is critical.

My top five tips are:

1. Have an agenda

It sounds basic, right? And yet, so many meetings are conducted without an agenda that it is no wonder that meetings go off the rails really quickly.

A good agenda needs to include:

• Each item for discussion, framed as a question. For example: How much money are we going to invest in the new venture?
• How much time is allocated to each agenda item.
• Whether the agenda item is for: information, discussion or a decision

In practice: In the meeting I was called in to facilitate, it was the first time the parties had a properly written agenda. I helped them draft an agenda that was short and clear, and it was circulated to all parties prior to the meeting to ensure everyone was happy with it (we didn’t want to waste the first 10-15 minutes of the meeting debating the actual agenda). We kept the agenda to one item only, and it was ‘for discussion’ – as a means of canvassing all views and trying to find common ground and a win-win solution.

2. Have a chairperson / facilitator

The role of the Chair or Facilitator is to ensure that:

• The rules of the meeting are explained up front, such as: We will be respectful of each other’s opinions; no one person will dominate the meeting; we won’t talk over each other; etc.)
• All opinions are canvassed and that no one person dominates the room.
• Each agenda item is addressed.
• Items ‘off topic’ are captured on a parking list for a later discussion.
• Each agenda item concludes with actionable next steps, an action owner, and a deadline.

In practice: In the meeting I was facilitating, I established the rules of engagement up front by respectfully acknowledging the wealth of knowledge and the brains trust in the room. I explained that it was my job to keep the meeting flowing, which allowed me to point out that if I felt someone was dominating or if the meeting was going off track, then I was going to call it. I asked everyone to agree and acknowledge that this was my role, which they did. It set the tone for the meeting, and it meant that I had permission to curtail anyone if I felt it necessary to do so.

3. Have a time keeper

This person must be different to the Chairperson, and their role is to alert the Chair to how much time an agenda item has left.

4. Keep minuting simple

Your minutes do not need to be Hansard. Minutes should be:

• Who (who has the action)
• What (what is the action)
• When (when is the action due)

5. Maintain a parking list

This is very important to ensure the meeting runs to time and that people aren’t distracted by something that is important and worthy of discussion, and yet not specifically on topic for this actual meeting.

In practice: In the meeting I facilitated, this proved invaluable as there was a lot of complexity and several layers to the discussion. As and when I felt we were going too deep on an issue that wasn’t at the core of what we were discussing, I would politely interrupt to acknowledge the contribution and state that I was going to add it to the parking list for a later discussion.

The meeting went for 90 minutes. At the end of the meeting, everyone felt that they had been heard and we had achieved a working compromise on what the next steps could look like. We knew what the actions were, who owned each action and the deadline for each action. We had a list of issues that were parked for later.

No one walked out feeling like they had an outright win, but everyone walked out feeling like a win-win was achievable.

This article first appeared on Flying Solo, read the original here.

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