How to run an effective meeting
Guidelines and suggestions for running effective meetings.
Warning
🚧 This website and most of its contents are often updated or modified. Many documents are at various stages of completion. 🚧
Effective meetings have a potential to improve productivity and work satisfaction and inspire greater collaboration.
Types of meetings
When setting up a meeting, it helps to have an idea on what type of meeting you want it to be and what the goals of the meeting are. Here are a few types to get you thinking about it.
- Onboarding meetings: Can be used for when a project starts up or when new people join a project or organization. They can give clarity on the overall structure, what the project is about (or what projects are on-going within an organization), what the newcomer(s) role is and how they fit into the broader picture, as well as to clarify expectations on tasks and duties. Much of this information should also be provided in a text based format.
- Brainstorming meetings: This is the best reason to have a meeting, when you want to brainstorm ideas. Brainstorming works best when you are together (in person or virtual), where you can come up with ideas, have others immediate input, and to build off of or improve on those ideas.
- Feedback and retrospective meetings evaluate the process: what went well, what didn’t, how to proceed and what will be changed for the next project.
Meeting category by aims
- Decision-making: The aim is for decision makers to come to a conclusion that leads to action. Consider the number of participants (fewer is better than more) and their competences (whose opinions and expertise are relevant to the problem).
- Information sharing: The objective is to spread awareness to a broader team. Consider using another platform than meeting to share this information, e.g., Slack, Trello, etc
- Problem-solving: The goal is to crowdsource advice and build a plan based on that knowledge, such as by discussing ways to optimize an experimental set-up.
- Discussion: The purpose is to exchange perspectives on a topic, such as by discussing the implications of a recently published paper.
Meeting rules
- Arrive on time
- Come prepared (especially important for the facilitator or organizer).
- Keep an open mind and a positive attitude.
- Actively listen to opinions and presentations of others.
- Do not interrupt.
- Do not monopolize talking time and do not dominate the meeting (facilitator’s role to help with this).
- Actively participate.
- Aim to reach consensus.
Before the meeting
- Make sure that everybody is familiar with the code of conduct and meeting rules.
- Make a meeting agenda, including time-frame (this lets people know what to expect).
- Assign people roles before the meeting starts:
- A facilitator should keep people on track, summarize after each topic and clarify next steps.
- A note taker is responsible for documenting and distributing clear and concise minutes.
- Presenters and other relevant participants should be notified of their expected roles beforehand, so they meet prepared.
- Consider the medium (either virtual or in-person, and if so, room size, lighting, temperature, chairs), time of the day, refreshments, etc.
- Organizer meets early and ensures that all the relevant materials (paper, pens, sticky notes, etc) and technical equipment (PC, projector, camera, etc) are present and functioning.
At the meeting
- Start meetings on time even if not everybody has arrived.
- Consider banning distractions (laptops/tablets/phones) from meetings.
- Consider starting with a brief icebreaker or a quick check-in on everyone’s day or week (however, details on Trello or similar).
- Consider asking for topics to be put on AOB (any other business) at the very beginning of the meeting, so everybody has some time to prepare for a potential surprise.
- If the meeting is part of a series, it is probably relevant to follow-up on last meeting, including progress (action items).
- Plan to engage people or check in on attendees often (examples below). Have people write down their questions during the meeting. Collect them and go over them as a group. This can help introverts, or those who don’t feel comfortable speaking up, get their concerns addressed. Break people into groups and have them accomplish small tasks, or make decisions, together. Then have them share their findings with the larger group. Break the meeting into sections with a different person leading each section or part of the agenda. Switching up presenters helps refresh people’s attention span and encourages attendees to feel ownership over a topic or project.
- A facilitator should keep people on track (parking lot for off-topic ideas), summarize after each topic and assign action items (owners, due date and follow-up).
- A note taker is responsible for documenting clear and concise minutes.
- End the meeting if all topics are handled, even if it is ahead of schedule.
- Leave meeting with a review of clear action items, due dates, and owners.
After the meeting
- Note taker deposits the recorded minutes on a designated platform, e.g., Trello, common docs, etc, so these are available to everybody who could and could not attend (preferably within 2-3 hours).
- Evaluation (feedback, anonymous?).