The Top Ten Pitfalls of Pitiful Meetings...Meeting Effectiveness Tips from FireFly Facilitation

What’s your personal meeting pet peeve? Is it…no clear agenda for the meeting…not starting and/or ending on time…one person dominating the meeting…or something else altogether?

Having sat through countless meetings myself, I am here to share with you that while some were truly great, unfortunately many more really just missed the mark – and could have been so much better with just a little bit more effort.

To set the stage, I want to let you in on what my 15 years of experience have taught me by listing what I have found to be        The Top Pitfalls of Pitiful Meetings:

1. No clear reason for the meeting

2. No agenda sent out in advance

3. Not getting the right people to attend

4. No agreed upon decision-making process

5. Not starting and ending on time

6. Not using ground rules

7. Ineffectively dealing with conflict

8. Disengaged participants

9. Allowing certain participants to dominate

10.Not capturing or following through on meeting decisions

In the upcoming posts, I will start addressing the pitfalls above (or others!) that get the most feedback. I would love to hear which meeting pet peeves are most important to you, so please leave a comment by clicking on the Comment () link below, and I promise to give you useful, practical tips for solving them.

Comments

[Crystal]

I manage a team of 10 student staff members and we meet on a weekly basis. As a student myself, I understand that they have other things going on and are often disengaged during our meetings. After meetings, they come to me asking the same questions that I already went over. It's very frustrating. How do you recommend leaders engage team members in this type of situation and help them retain the important information?

[Kimberly Douglas]

Thank you for your question, Chad! For weekly staff meetings that run long, I recommend using “the lightning round” for report outs. Each person must come prepared (that’s key!) to share the current state of projects and key issues needing resolution – that need to be shared with the other team members. Each person is only allowed to use 2 or 3 minutes (you all decide together how much time to allocate). Use a kitchen timer that the person speaking can see – and that goes off when time is up. Reserve a place on the agenda (after the report outs) for addressing the most critical issues more fully. It may seem silly, but done with the right attitude and a little preparation, the simple timer approach will really help keep people aligned – and on track with time!

[Chad M.]

Kimberly,

I have a small IT company of about 10 employees.

We hold manager's meetings every Thursday except the first Thursday of the month where we hold a company meeting.

Manager's meetings and (sometimes company meetings), do not have a formal agenda.

We have an informal agenda which is to report on the status of the current 90 days goals, and plans for execution going forward. We also discuss any other pending issues that might be 90 day goal related, such as general customer service, projects.

At Manager's Meetings, managers are expected to provide reports on their Areas of Responsibility. I got this from a company I used to work at previously. We would go around the room and report on our AoRs and the group would ask questions, clarify, etc. We find that this keeps us aligned. They run far longer than I would like however. Is there a better way?