Get the best from your meetings

You sip your cup of morning tea during the first meeting of the day, a Daily Scrum at 9.15. Then a few minutes break just to go to the restroom, and then another meeting, this time it's 1 hour long. You think you have one hour in which you can do your scheduled work, but then a colleague calls you in emergency to solve an issue. Then it's lunch time. Eating a rice salad with your camera switched off and mic on mute, than other few meeting till the evening comes, and you feel you have done nothing.

Is this a typical day of yours? Well, maybe not just yours: a research made shows that just in the United States, there are at least 11 million meetings per day, the average worker spends at least 3 hours a week in meetings - 8 meetings per week, and there is an average of 31 hours spent per month in unproductive meetings.

Well, then probably you should rethink the way you are handling meeting and get real value from them! Here are a few tips.

Define the purpose and the agenda

To design a productive meeting, first define its purpose. A purpose

• clarifies a meeting's goal
• establishes who should attend and what's expected of them
• makes it easy to steer the conversation in the right direction

To define the purpose of a meeting, you can talk to potential attendees about the topics that need to be discussed, then craft a "purpose statement": a sentence that clarifies what the meeting should accomplish. This purpose should be shared in advanced with the attendees. Then draft an agenda that includes topics to be discussed and people involved. The more details are provided, the easier is for the people to come prepared.

Share protocols

The above linked statistics shows that during virtual meetings, at least 55% of employees perform multitasking: they check their emails, use mobile phones, eat snacks, surf the internet or watches social media. You should guide the way participants behave and interact with each other, including: rules about asking questions, sharing opinions, behave respectfully and getting the attention of the person speaking. Think about these protocols in advance, then communicate them to the attendees.

Invite the right people

How many times did you stay silent during a meeting and wondered why you were asked to participate? For each person you invite, you should think why you are doing so. And when you invite them, explain why their contribution is needed. Reducing people involved in a meeting allows also productive communication: remember that channels of communication increase exponentially with the number of people.

Pause when needed

Meetings may be done for gathering ideas or sharing opinions, and pausing the session is just as helpful as keeping it flowing. There are three kinds of pauses:

• practical pauses: they allow people to reenergize or use the bathroom
• reflective pauses: they allow people making notes, thinking or resting their minds
• strategic pauses: great for helping people calm down in tense situations or getting participants discuss into smaller groups

Follow-through

Follow-through may be done in two ways:

• next actions: clear and specific tasks with outlined expectations
• delegated outcomes: results for which specific people are responsible

Always improve

If you are a meeting attendee, make it a valuable use of time. If the agenda is unclear (or absent) ask the organizer for more details, so you can prepare and contribute as best you can. Even if you are obliged to go to a meeting that seems irrelevant to you, spend a few minutes beforehand clearing your thoughts and prepare to focus and give your contribution as well.

You can find even more suggestions in the book "How to fix meetings" that inspired and helped me writing this article.