A common problem in many organizations today is the ineffective meeting. We’ve all been in them and odds are, several of you reading this blog have led those meetings. We’re talking about the team meeting that lasts an hour or longer but should have lasted 15 minutes at best. It’s the meeting that left you wondering what the purpose of the meeting was. In essence a lot of time was spent with little to no value received. The typical reason for this ineffective meeting is that Leadership and Management have collided and created a mess of a time waster.
Here’s the problem… a team meeting is about leadership. Keep in mind that leadership deals with the whole group and what applies to the group. Management deals with individuals. When it comes to managing it is best to operate within the one-on-one meeting. When you are conducting a team meeting you are now leading. Your team members should not bring up issues or topics that deal primarily with them only and the leader should not deal with their personal management, one-on-one issues. What ends up happening is personal issues are discussed, nothing is dealt with or solved and your team members end up in a hour-long meeting that had 10 minutes of content that affected each of them directly.
It’s critical to structure all of your meetings properly. Stick with the broad issues in a team meeting. Avoid “blue skying”. Stay on topic with issues that deal with the organization as a whole and those that affect most if not all of the team members or their areas of responsibility, remember the bigger the meeting the broader the topics. Be sure to recognize a hero in the meeting. Have someone take notes and remember that shorter is better. There’s nothing wrong with having a 15-minute meeting.
