If you are anything like me, you are troubled by the amount of meetings one must attend in a given work week. It’s not that we don’t want to be a part of the team or do the work, it’s that generally speaking, meetings tend to… well… not much gets accomplished, or if it does, it’s not documented and shared with the group in follow up. And believe it or not, there is one thing worse than a wasted meeting… A wasted meeting that starts 15 minutes late.
I was very pleased to learn that my employers has not allowed these habits to go unnoticed and yesterday we had a meeting to discuss meetings (which was NOT a waste of time) – but they started off with some tips (you may have heard these before) on how to waste time in meetings. So here are the 8 tips provided by Mike Rogers:
1. Invite everyone. We all need to time to waste, and you wouldn’t want to hurt anyones feelings by not including them. However, be careful about inviting people who might try to accomplish something during the meeting. On the other hand, make sure you invite people who tell good jokes, like to goof around and are generally entertaining.
2. Don’t start the meeting until everyone has arrived. Starting a meeting on time would be rude to those who are late. Plus starting a meeting late helps everyone feel more comfortable about being late next time, which almost assures you will start the meeting late everytime.
3. Never, never, never have an agenda. Agendas create structure that can stifle tangents.
4. Leaders should do most if not all of the talking. Since the leader knows best, it makes the most sense that he or she talk the most.
5. Only those with “good” ideas should provide them. Anybody who submits a “stupid” idea should be laughed at, mocked and generally spit upon.
6. Give people freedom to “multitask” during meetings. Let everyone know at the start of the meeting that if they need to do other things such as texting, reading email or answering calls to go right ahead. It will make the meeting all the more productive for everyone.
7. Never make assignments. Assignments mean work will need to be done.
8. Never end a meeting on time. Doing so means you didn’t apply items one through seven above!
I have to admit, I laughed out loud at the absurdity of several of these tips from Mike Rogers, but in reality – it’s quite sad when you realize how much of problem some of these really are, and sometime all of them may apply. I will admit, I try hard to start my meetings on time and not allow folks to go down rabbit holes. I try to come prepared with agendas, and I do try to follow up with meetings notes. I have particular project team that does show up on time every week now (which maybe is because the first several weeks I was vocal about the fact that we never seem to start on time)- Yeah team! But I am not a perfect meeting facilitator either and am excited to learn ways to improve.
To address these things (at least in our company), we’ve kicked off a book club and our first read is “Death by Meeting” by Patrick Lencioni. I am looking forward to reading this book, and working to improve my meeting skills. Do you have any good meeting tips?
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