Running Productive and Engaging Team Meetings

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Running Productive and Engaging Team Meetings (download transcript)

Brought to you by Assemble You.

Meetings can be incredibly useful. They enable us to pool our knowledge, experience and perspectives. They’re the optimal method for collaboratively solving problems and making decisions.

But there are downsides. Meetings can disrupt our workdays and take us away from other important tasks. They can also sap our energy and morale when they’re overly long, frustrating or unproductive.

Fortunately, there are simple steps you can take as a leader to make sure your team meetings are productive and engaging.

Steven Rogelberg is an organisational psychologist who has studied the science of meetings. Speaking to The American Psychological Association, he advises meeting leaders to view themselves as ‘stewards of everyone else’s valuable time’. [1]

In this lesson, we’ll explore how you can do that by being strategic about how you organise meetings, sharing effective agendas and creating an encouraging and inclusive environment.

If you think you need to organise a meeting, don’t immediately call up your calendar app. Researchers at McKinsey suggest that your first step should be to pinpoint the meeting’s specific purpose. [2] What do you need to achieve? You might need to make a decision, have a group brainstorm or share information.

Knowing the exact purpose makes it easier to decide everything from the ideal style of meeting to who needs to be there. You might even realise that a meeting isn’t the best way to achieve the desired outcome. For instance, if you just have to pass on some routine information and there won’t be any need to discuss it as a team, there’s a good chance that a meeting would be unnecessary. Think of a way to communicate the update and answer questions asynchronously so you can make sure nobody ends up with that dreaded “this could have been an email” feeling.

If you do decide that a meeting is the best way to achieve your desired outcome, when should you have it and how long should it be? Unfortunately, there’s no perfect formula for working this out. A good strategy would be to experiment as a team to see what works best for different types of discussions.

As a rule of thumb though, Steven Rogelberg says shorter meetings may well be more productive. Speaking to The Society for Human Resource Management, he points out that our habit of defaulting to 60-minute blocks means we tend to take all that time when we could achieve the same results in a shorter period. [3] Having a more pressing deadline applies a gentle form of pressure that encourages people to focus. It’s also more considerate of everyone’s time and other commitments. So why not road test some 20 or even 15-minute meetings?

Once you’ve scheduled the meeting, create an agenda. This should state the meeting’s purpose, as well as the topics you want to discuss. In an article for The Harvard Business Review, organisational psychologist Roger Schwarz has these suggestions for creating an effective agenda [4]:

Format the agenda topics as questions the team needs to answer. This will help make the discussion more targeted.

Include what the desired outcome for each discussion is (such as gathering ideas or making a decision) and the process you’ll be following to achieve it.

Roughly estimate how long each discussion should take.

Share the agenda with all of your invitees ahead of time so that you’re all on the same page before the meeting begins and can get straight into the discussions. This will also help to reassure them that the meeting will be a productive use of their time.

During the meeting itself, do your best not to stray from the agenda. While constantly directing people back to it might feel like you’re putting a damper on the discussion, it will help you to keep things running efficiently.

Sometimes though, you will have to deal with someone who is determined to go off on a tangent. In another article for HBR, Schwarz and Judith White advise responding to these interruptions by staying calm and receptive. [5] Ask the team member to explain how their point relates to the current agenda item. If it genuinely isn’t relevant, reassure them that it’s a valuable point that you would be glad to revisit at another time, then redirect the discussion by restating the meeting’s purpose.

Leave a few minutes at the end of the meeting to go over what’s been discussed. Make sure everyone is clear on what needs to happen next and who is responsible.

To ensure you’re getting the most out of your team, you also need to focus on making your meetings inclusive and supportive spaces.

Agree a set of “meeting norms” with your team that apply to all meetings. These could range from how people use devices like phones to how long people should speak for. If everyone knows what the expectations are, they’ll feel much more at ease and there will be a lot less friction.

Leadership coach Luis Velasquez suggests directly defining desired team behaviours and regularly restating these at the start of meetings. In an article for HBR, he gives this example of what that might sound like: “As a team, we support each other, we tackle challenges together, and we communicate transparently and constructively.” [6] Make sure you model these behaviours as a leader as well.

It’s all too common for people’s contributions to get lost in the discussion or to be misattributed to the wrong person, both things that can leave the original contributor feeling frustrated and undervalued. People from marginalised groups are particularly at risk of this. In a 2021 study published in the Academy of Management Journal, researchers found that an effective way to stop colleagues being overlooked like this is to use a technique called “amplification”. [7] To amplify someone’s voice, verbally acknowledge their contribution and credit them by name. For example, you could say, “I’d like to return to the excellent point Leona made about social media.”

Even if you take these steps, you might still find that your team are reluctant to offer their thoughts. Inviting people to contribute directly can demonstrate to them that their contributions are welcome but it could also potentially backfire by making them feel like you’re putting them on the spot. Another approach is to try to address the root cause of their reluctance.

Roger Schwarz believes that getting people involved at the agenda creation stage can nurture engagement. In his HBR article on agendas, he provides this advice: “Ask team members to suggest agenda items and include a reason why each item needs to be addressed in a team setting. If you ultimately decide not to include an item, be accountable — explain your reasoning to the team member who suggested it.” [4]

Another strategy to boost engagement is to share responsibility for facilitating the meeting.

Psychologist Liane Davey recommends giving each member responsibility for a particular item on the agenda. [8] This could help to build their confidence with speaking up as well.

People may not be comfortable contributing because a question has taken them by surprise and they don’t have time to think. Erika Andersen recommends giving people advanced warning about questions you’d like them to offer opinions on. [9] That way, they’ll have a chance to properly consider their position, potentially do some research and formulate a response that they’re happy with. You could do this very easily by including supplementary discussion questions in the agenda.

You could also invite people who are less forthcoming to a one-on-one chat. Luis Velasquez suggests starting out by praising their contributions to the team and then asking them some open-ended questions to explore their feelings around meetings, such as “What changes could we make to our meeting structure that would make you feel more inclined to participate? How can I support you in feeling comfortable expressing your ideas?” [6]

This suggestion flows into a recommendation many researchers into meeting science have made and that’s that you should constantly seek feedback from your team about how you can make meetings better. Regularly survey people on their feelings about the meetings you have, including content, frequency, timing and how they make them feel.

To run a productive and engaging meeting, start with what you want to achieve and let that guide you. Aim to keep it as short as you can. Make sure everyone understands what you want to discuss and  achieve by distributing a detailed agenda ahead of time so they can prepare. To make sure everyone feels heard and valued, amplify people’s voices during the meeting and regularly ask for ways to improve meetings in future.

Most importantly, always try to keep in mind what Steven Rogelberg said about being a steward of everyone else’s valuable time. Keep asking yourself what you can do as a facilitator to make sure that any meeting you organise is the best possible use of your team’s time and energy.

• Think back to a meeting that you thought was organised really well. What insights and techniques could you borrow?
• If there are members of your team who aren’t very forthcoming in meetings, how could you start to address that in a supportive and empathetic way?

Running Productive and Engaging Team Meetings

• As a meeting leader, regard yourself as a steward of everyone else’s time.
• Before scheduling a meeting, clarify its purpose.
• Shorter meetings are often more productive. Challenge the default 60-minute meeting.
• A clear agenda that communicates the meeting’s purpose and key discussion points is essential to help people prepare. Share it in advance to support participants.
• Use techniques like amplification to make sure everyone feels included and valued in meetings.
• Seek feedback so you can constantly make meetings better for your team.

(download infographic)