So that you can finally focus on your meetings with your colleagues, teams and superiors again, this article provides you with the 5 steps to an effective meeting – especially in spontaneous home office times.
We live in a meeting culture. The figures prove it: Managers spend more than 7,000 hours a year in ineffective meetings. meetings.
We use meetings to keep each other up to date on progress, discuss project changes or develop strategies together. They are an important part of corporate communication, but are often more disorganized than necessary and tend to exceed the time frame.
For this reason, meetings in many companies are more of a necessary evil than an enrichment of everyday life and represent a waste of time, effort and frustration.
To make the exchange with your colleagues, teams and superiors more effective, this article provides the 5steps to an effective meeting – especially in times of spontaneous remote work.
5 steps to an effective meeting with the team
A study of meetings in 17 different companies found that managers spend up to 60% of their working time in meetings, but only 58% of meetings produce results. Accordingly, you should question the necessity of every meeting. Spontaneous meetings are particularly big productivity killers, but in times of open door policies they are often a big part of many managers’ work. With these, it is particularly important to ask yourself whether a meeting is really necessary or whether it can wait until the next stand-up. If meetings are necessary, responsibilities and accountabilities should be defined in advance to save time. Step 2: Invite the right people An effective meeting stands and falls with the right choice of people around the table. You should generally try to keep the number of people involved as small as possible. When inviting participants, ask yourself a few basic questions: Is the person directly involved in the issue? Can this person’s experience or activities be expected to provide impetus that will bring us closer to our goal? How important is the question for this person? Is this person important for making the decision? Only when you are convinced that this person is indispensable for the meeting should they be invited.
Step 1: As few spontaneous meetings as possible
A study of meetings in 17 different companies found that managers spend up to 60% of their working time in meetings , but only 58% of meetings produce results .
Accordingly, you should question the necessity of every meeting.
Spontaneous meetings are particularly big productivity killers, but in times of open door policies they are often a big part of many managers’ work. With these, it is particularly important to ask yourself whether a conversation is really necessary or whether it can wait until the next stand-up.
If meetings are necessary, responsibilities and accountabilities should be defined in advance to save time.
Step 2: Invite the right people
An effective meeting stands and falls with the right choice of people at the table. You should generally try to keep the number of people involved as small as possible. Ask yourself a few basic questions when you invite the participants:
- Is the person directly involved in the question?
- Can this person’s experience or activities be expected to provide impetus that will bring us closer to our goal?
- How important is the question for this person?
- Is this person important for making the decision?
Only when you are convinced that this person is indispensable for the meeting should they be invited.
Step 3: Give your effective meetings structure and avoid disruptors
Leadership is also one of the decisive factors in meetings. The positions should be clearly distributed: from the meeting host, who is responsible for the agenda and the exact objectives in collaboration with the participants, to the timekeeper, who ensures that the agenda is adhered to. It is best to make an estimate of how long the meeting should last in advance and stick to it. The following also applies here: Only because an hour is automatically scheduled in the calendar: The actual time needed to achieve the set goal may differ significantly. However, if you prefer to plan more time, you can be sure that the meeting will take the same amount of time or even more. According to the Parkinson’s law work takes up as much time as you give it. The same applies to meetings. Reduce the time you originally want to schedule for a meeting by a tenth.
In order to keep to the ambitious schedule, the following applies: disruptive influences have no place in a meeting. So smartphone off, door closed and laptops off the table. This ensures that everyone can concentrate undisturbed on the topic at hand and does not distract the others.
Step 4: Create an atmosphere of concentration for effective meetings
In your everyday life, you are exposed to numerous external influences that mean you rarely have time to concentrate on strategic and long-term issues.
In meetings, however, it is precisely this space that is needed to address the important questions for which there is otherwise no time.
On the one hand, an atmosphere of concentration arises from the aspects of the first three steps, but it can also be helpful to change perspectives in meetings and perhaps also come together outside the company building to gather new, creative impulses.
In burini’s offsites for leaders, the traditional meeting becomes a team experience for the participants, full of concentration and distance from operational business. The aim is to work on strategic and long-term issues and achieve a specific goal.
Step 5: Involve every participant for a productive meeting
It is also exciting to give the meeting the character of a workshop, in which each participant contributes something and there are phases for working out and presenting one’s own position. In this way, everyone has their say and is encouraged to actively participate in the topic.
According to a study, it can be helpful to integrate different types of media such as presentations, tables and small activities etc. into the meeting, as 72% of participants say it helps to increase interactivity. So be creative when organizing your next meeting.
