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Essential Items For Your Meetings

©volff/ Dollar Photo Club

You know you need to bring your team together. There are several important things you need to accomplish in the meeting, but the bad news is you know the meeting will take at least two hours. Based on the meeting culture you have, people will loathe this. So, what can you do?

The answer: Have a great meeting. How do you do that? Mix it up. A meeting longer than 45 minutes needs to have 3-5 components within in to be rendered successful to the skeptics. (Sometimes meeting content is high value for you as team leader, but not valued the same way for others. You need to be okay with that, and occasionally so do they.  But you can’t systematically have meetings that are of a low value to your team.)

Not every meeting requires all of this content – but if you plan to keep people’s attention, develop, inspire, and make decisions that help everyone, make sure to include three of these content types in each of your longer meetings:

  1. Development
    What competency can be taught in your meeting that improves those in it? How can you challenge their thinking, habits, or interpersonal interactions in order for them to be better developed for their life or job role? This takes sacrifice because it’s going to take up time in your meeting – and also before it. . It takes preparedness. Adding development items into your agenda isn’t something you think of while walking to the meeting, or pull from some other leader’s website that morning. This requires you to plan and prepare to develop others.  For example: during my regular senior leadership meeting which is 2.5 hours in length, we typically set aside 25-30 minutes for development. If you value development as a leader, prove it.
  1. The “why”
    You’ve got to ensure your team knows the why for several things: the meeting itself, any significant agenda items, and the bigger why of them being required to work hard all the time.  Sometimes you’ll need to give context by telling a story or giving history on how we got here. Other times, just a simple statement like this will be sufficient:  “We have this meeting to ensure we make collaborative and well-informed decisions on matters that influence our… ”
  1. Buy-in
    Let them participate and have influence. Some meetings are simply a download of information – but those need to be short. Longer meetings need to have interaction – and participants need to have a stake in the outcome. You as a leader need to communicate what’s up for debate and consensus, versus what’s simply them speaking into a decision you or someone else will ultimately make. I’ve blogged before about the importance of establishing clarity regarding consensus versus input.
  1. Strategy
    I blogged recently about the importance of designing your meeting agenda with strategic discussion given the highest priority. There need to be times when you have discussions at higher levels of strategy, rather than getting caught in the weeds of operational details.
  1. Operational
    There are also times when you need to get in the weeds. Certain team members are going to want to always rush to the operational stuff. If they don’t see time on the agenda to discuss calendar items or details that allow them to do their work, you’ll lose them.  Don’t be afraid of doing this, but do assess its value and timing correctly in the overall meeting agenda.
  1. Laughter
    Don’t force this with a stand-up routine, but do allow margin for it. Most every team has that guy or gal who’s just funny. Let them be funny.  Don’t talk over everyone’s laughter by announcing the next agenda item. Live in the laughter for a moment. Sometimes it’ll need to be corralled, but do that sparingly.
  1. Bonus for those in ministry settings: Prayer
    Not just because you should, but because you want the meeting and its decisions to be dependent on wisdom from God. Praying not only reminds those in attendance who is ultimately in charge, but also allows for the Divine in an otherwise effort-driven- cause. I also like to leave room for spontaneous prayers. Sometimes a need or tense subject will come up, and fairly often, I’ll stop the meeting, and ask some to pray about the matter. It’s not given an agenda slot, and I do have to make up for the lost time elsewhere in the meeting, but I’ve never regretted it.

Not every great meeting requires all of these. But when you do include them, make sure to mix it up and engage those with differing learning styles. Don’t always do the ones easiest for you. I hope you have some great meetings.

(As an example of a meeting with these components, I’ve attached one of our recent meeting agendas for you to review. You can view it in my resources page, by clicking on this Sample meeting agenda.)

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Remedying Bad Meetings

Group of Business People in a Meeting with Speech Bubbles

There’s a lot of leadership talk about minimizing meetings. People “loathe” them and church staffs are not immune to this sentiment. I contend those who loathe them are used to bad meetings, but meetings can be good. If maximized, they can produce far greater results than an email or individual “offline” meetings ever can.

But, it’s got to be a good meeting.

I’m pro-meeting. Well, I’m pro-good meeting. If your staff culture already has a meeting avoidance attitude, you’ll have to earn your right with good meetings. Here are some tips:

1. Use meetings for strategic discussions and email for operational items

Many operational items can be accomplished through email. So use that tool. But my experience says strategic discussions happen best in group settings. Collaborative thinking is a key ingredient to well thought out strategy.

2. Allow for margin between meetings

Some days I stack meeting upon meeting, which is poor time management and it means I’m not at my best for my next meeting. Space between meetings allows you to recalibrate, review your upcoming agenda, record output from previous meeting (a key follow-up for meetings you lead) and even check a few emails to make sure you can stay focused in your next meeting.

3. Respect the beginning time and ending time

I’ve blogged on this more than once. Speed of the leader, speed of the team. You owe it the meeting’s content and the people you’re involving to watch this time issue closely. You not only need to be mindful of promptness yourself, but hold those accountable who don’t respect it.

4. Include prayer

Sometimes prayer at the beginning is what is needed. Other times prayer at the end. But don’t hesitate to schedule prayer time during the meeting. Corporate prayer is a powerful thing. And when you’ve created space for it, it shows how much you value it.

5. Be prepared

When someone comes to a meeting you’re leading, a goal worth having is them thinking, “Wow, they were prepared.” That means documents were ready, you had given thought to the topic, and you have an objective for the meeting. If you don’t prove the meeting is important you, they won’t find it important either.

6. Make sure everyone knows their role

Are they there to receive assignments? Give input? A voter in a consensus decision? I feel much better about attending a meeting when I know what’s expected of me. If I know what’s expected, I can be prepared and also not be let down when I find out they have a role for me in the meeting other than what I was expecting.

7. Know when to cancel a meeting

Many meetings will be on a routine schedule, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be cancelled. When the agenda doesn’t call for an in-person meeting, cancel it.

8. Use the meeting to make your staff better

Consciously plan meeting content to develop those attending. This has been modeled well for me in the past and in many of my meetings, I plan portions of the meeting for teaching opportunities. We’re not doing “trust falls” every meeting, but I hope most of my meetings provide those in attendance to be a little more effective in their roles.

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