How To Have Meaningful Meetings

Meetings have been a part of business culture since day one, and you’ll struggle to find a business that doesn’t use them in some way or another. Business meetings have stood the test of time because they can be great ways to keep up to date with everyone in a team, figure out ideas, create new plans of action, and inform people about important updates and announcements. 

The problem with meetings is that they can feel, more than not, like a waste of time for employees. With digital communication now such a key component in business, many meetings’ original purpose can now be completed with a quick email.  

That doesn’t mean business meetings are obsolete. Instead, they need to be restructured and refocused to have genuine value. Here’s a guide that should help you make your ineffective get-togethers into high-performing, meaningful meetings.   

Create A Meeting Template 

Creating a meeting template is a good idea to help keep your meeting structured and stop it from going off track. A template is a document that will help you organize and plan the meeting, allowing you to figure out some of the key details ahead of time.  

Completing a template and handing it out to everyone attending the meeting beforehand will help ensure that everyone is prepared. By giving people this information before the session starts, you’ll find that more people will be able to better engage with the topic, resulting in a more constructive meeting.  

There are no strict rules for creating your meeting template. However, it’s a good idea that when you come up with a structure, you keep it uniform and consistent throughout your entire business.  

A meeting template should have sections where you’re able to note down key details, such as:  

• Who is attending the meeting  
• Who the main speaker is 

• What the topic of the meeting is  
• Time, date, and location of the meeting 
• Notes from the meeting, including any action plans 

With a template, you’ll find that your meetings go a lot smoother, stay on track better, are generally more effective, and have better time management.  

Have A Clear Agenda  

The worst kind of meeting is a meeting for the sake of it. As these get-togethers are a core part of business culture, many businesses owners and team leaders feel pressured that they need to have them as often as possible.  

Regular contact with employees can be a good thing; however, going into these meetings without a clear plan of what it’s going to be about can be frustrating for staff. Furthermore, it can be even more frustrating for staff when there is a plan, but it hasn’t been communicated to them, leaving them feeling blindsided.  

When inviting staff to participate in a meeting, make sure to outline exactly what the meeting will be about and what objectives you want to achieve. Doing this will help staff prepare better for the meeting. It also has the added benefit of allowing you to push the meeting along into finding a solution and completing the objective, helping you to create more meaningful meetings.  

Set A Clear Time Scale – And Stick To It  

When asked about what annoys them most about company meetings, the majority of staff will cite that they usually take too long. Despite being designed as a tool to help workers, if a meeting overruns, it can have the opposite effect and actually cause more stress.  

If a meeting goes on for hours and doesn’t end up with a solid conclusion or no progress has been made, most people will find that meeting a waste of time.  

Furthermore, as a significant amount of their time has been lost, it means that staff would have a reduced timeframe to complete their work, leading to them being forced to work overtime to finish their tasks.  

This last point can be made even more irritating if the meeting was announced last minute, as it means that staff will have little time to plan their schedules around this.  

To avoid these kinds of issues, it’s important that you improve your time management and set a clear timescale for the meeting, and do everything you can to stick to it. It’s also as important to know how long a meeting realistically needs.  

Most meetings don’t need to run any longer than an hour, and if you’re just conducting a weekly catch-up meeting with your staff, then that can easily be condensed into a snappy 15-minute chat or even an email.  

If you’re going to have multiple speakers in a meeting presenting ideas or figures, give them defined time limits to keep their presentation to. Doing so will ensure that there’s no rambling, and it will also help keep the meeting interesting, as people can lose focus if meetings last a long time. 

Only Invite Staff That The Meeting Is Relevant To  

It’s important to realize that not every staff member needs to attend every meeting. This is because there are bound to be meetings that only concern a certain aspect or department of a business. To ensure that none of your staff leave a meeting with the thought ‘I really didn’t have to be there,’ make sure to think about how vital the information or topic is for each staff member.  

For example, if you’re holding a meeting to try and develop a new social media marketing campaign, think about the departments where this would be relevant. It makes sense to include those who work in the marketing department and your SEO specialists; however, it might not be that viable to also invite your sales team or staff from other unassociated departments.  

Some team leaders might argue that including people with various skills might mean getting ideas that are ‘outside the box.’ However, the truth of this situation will be that those who aren’t experienced in the meeting topic will feel out of their depth and will be less inclined to contribute and make suggestions, as they have no expertise on what is being discussed. This ultimately means that it will be deemed a waste of time for these attendees who are not relevant to the meeting.  

So, when planning a meeting and working out who to include, make sure that you only invite staff to which the topic is highly focused and their line of work.   

Keep A Record of The Meeting 

A meeting will be pretty much pointless if no one who attended it has any recollection of it. This is why it’s important that people take notes of what has been discussed so that there is a record to look back on and use.  

So many meetings are made redundant because people have neglected to take note of what has happened and what the meeting has achieved.  

To ensure this doesn’t happen to your business, make an effort to note down on your template any key decisions that have been made, any important takeaways, as well as the next steps that people need to action.  

If you’re conducting a meeting that includes a few people, it might make better sense to elect a reliable person to be the sole note taker for the meeting. This will allow others to be more conversational and better focus on the discussion and idea generation.  

When going with this approach, it’s vital that the note taker summarizes everything said – much like a conclusion at the end of an article – so that nothing has been missed and everyone is in agreement. It’s also best practice to digitize these notes and send them out to all the recipients.  

Conclusion 

Meetings can be a powerful way for businesses to develop solutions and share ideas. However, to be the most effective, they need to be conducted with the optimal structure.  

When planning your next meeting, be sure to use a template that details all the key information, like the start time, end time, main speaker, topic, objectives, and more. Doing so will ensure that the meeting is kept on track and that no one deviates from the main topic for too long.  

Having an agenda will further improve a meeting, as staff will know what to expect and will be able to be more prepared, which can allow them to engage with the topic better.  

It’s also important to include the right staff members for each meeting and record the outcomes of the meeting so that it can more easily be actioned in the future.  

Meetings are a big part of our culture here at Click Intelligence, and actioning these suggestions has helped us create tight, well-structured, and most importantly, meaningful meetings. If you want to learn more about what we do and what else we’ve been successful with, be sure to read more About Us.  

By putting these tips and structures in place, you will be able to create a meeting that will feel important and meaningful, where staff will leave feeling elated, and that progress has been made. Meetings are one of the biggest weapons business leaders have to generate success, so make sure to maximize your output by structuring meetings the correct way.