33 Tips for Leading Better Meetings

The word “meeting” evokes frustration and hatred in the minds of many employees.

Poorly conducted meetings zap time and energy that could be spent doing other things, which is why meetings are the favored whipping boy of many businesspeople.

Software company Atlassian recently published these statistics about meetings:

• 31 hours/month spent by the average employee on unproductive meetings
• $37 billion/year spent on unproductive meetings across the U.S.
• 73% of employees did other work in meetings
• 39% of employees slept during meetings

And yet, a well-conducted meeting can save time, provide clarity, and even alter the direction of a team or company. The key is not to avoid meetings, but to get better at conducting them.

I’ve had the chance to conduct hundreds of meetings over the past decade: strategic planning meetings, team retrospectives, iteration planning meetings, weekly team meetings, and many others. Along the way, I’ve made many of the classic meeting mistakes but also learned a number of powerful lessons.

Here are 33 things I’ve learned about how to conduct effective meetings.

BEFORE the Meeting

1. Decide whether a meeting is necessary.

Could the decision be made over email rather than hosting a meeting? Or perhaps a slack poll would allow you to gather the information you need? If you can efficiently gather the information in another way, don’t conduct a meeting.

2. Determine your objective.

You should be crystal clear on what you want to get out of the meeting. Do you want the group to brainstorm ideas to solve a problem? Are you trying to gather input to make a decision? Are you seeking buy-in for a decision you’ve already made? Each of these situations requires a nuanced approach.

3. Decide what falls within the scope of the meeting.

If you don’t define boundaries for the discussion, it will be easy for the meeting to go off the rails. For example, if you’re leading a meeting to gather feedback on a new product that is in beta testing, tell the group exactly what type of feedback you’re looking for: “We won’t be adding any new features right now, so I’m primarily looking for feedback on the product’s current features and its user interface.”

4. Host different meetings for different purposes.

“To make our meetings more effective, we need to have multiple types of meetings, and clearly distinguish between the various purposes, formats, and timing of those meetings.” -Patrick Lencioni

In his book Death by Meeting, Author Patrick Lencioni recommends four different types of meetings to achieve different purposes:

• Daily standup: Quick meeting to touch base on daily priorities and what each person accomplished the prior day (15 minutes or less)
• Weekly tactical: Review team metrics and weekly focuses (1–2 hours)
• Monthly strategic: Choose one or two big topics that require a deep-dive discussion, bring relevant data to make a decision (2–4 hours)
• Quarterly offsite: View the business from a distance, discuss items that have a long-term impact on the success of the team or company (1–2 days)

5. Only invite necessary attendees.

Strive to have no more than eight people in each meeting. There is a noticeable difference in efficiency between meetings with fewer than eight attendees and those with more than eight attendees.

6. Invite every relevant decision-maker.

Although you need to limit the number of attendees, you also must ensure that the relevant decision-makers are in the room. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself hosting a second meeting later on the same topic just to gather the buy-in of the decision-makers who missed the first meeting.

7. Send an agenda in advance.

Many attendees like to mentally prepare for meetings, so send an agenda before the meeting. Frame the agenda as OUTCOMES you want to achieve rather than TOPICS you want to discuss. Doing so will signal to attendees that you’re interested in action — not aimless discussion. Here are two examples:

• Determine pricing strategy for new product > Discuss product pricing
• Decide whether to give a rebate to client X > Rebate for client X

8. Collect all of the relevant information prior to the meeting.

You don’t want to show up at the meeting and find out that you don’t have the necessary info to make a decision. Prepare for the meeting by gathering data that may arise in the discussion. For example, if the purpose of the meeting is to find ways to deepen your company’s partnership with your largest client, consider bringing a list of the client’s most recent development requests, your company’s product roadmap, and stats on how much revenue the client generates for your company.

9. Be wary of assigning “pre-work” before meetings.

In situations where people need to know a lot of information before making a decision, it can be tempting to assign pre-work, like asking attendees to read a document, brainstorm a list of ideas, etc. However, few people will put in the time to do pre-work. If you absolutely need attendees to read or do something before the meeting, make it explicitly clear why that is important or try doing tip #15 below instead.

10. Consider hosting “pre-meetings” with key decision-makers.

If you’re planning to pitch a big, new idea during the meeting, you should think about meeting with one or two of the loudest voices before the meeting. Win them over to your side before talking to the full group. They’ll appreciate you coming to them for help and they can serve as vocal advocates for you during the group meeting.