If you’re like me, you’ve probably had your share of meetings.

You’ve probably sat through thousands of meetings: professional, volunteer, religious, ceremonial… the list goes on and on.

I know I’ve sat through hundreds of each of those. I’m sure you’ve also wondered how many of these meetings were necessary along with whether or not you and/or the person conducting the meeting were actually accomplishing something or if you were wasting time. Many times, even when there is an agenda in place, there is an aimless quality that can emerge in the meeting where the person conducting the meeting goes off on a tangent or even worse, allows another participant to go off on a tangent.

What follows is knowledge I’m sharing with you at no cost with the hope that it will inspire you to take better control of the meetings you have to conduct, whether professional or volunteer and also that you can influence those who may be wasting other people’s time with their own meanderings in the meeting. This knowledge has come at a price. Of course, it involved extensive hours of study and discovery along with consulting multiple clients and organizations on what has been missing from having a more effective meeting.

What Makes an Effective Meeting?

So, without further ado, I am sharing the formula. Please know, I’ve read a lot over the years on organizational dynamics and organizational leadership (much of which overintellectualizes the following) and I think the most important elements distill into three categories when dealing with any problem to be solved.

After all, why are you having a meeting unless there is a problem to be solved?

Of course, there are more subtle elements that need to be considered such as setting, attendees, the sensitivity surrounding a topic and much more. I may add a “bonus” tips section to this article, but to keep the formula pithy and easy to remember, this is the most essential part of any effective meeting:

When you are planning the agenda, ask yourself three questions:

What is the most pressing problem that our team/organization is facing?
What are the potential solutions to this problem?
Who is the best individual(s) to execute the chosen solution to this problem?

Really? Is that all There is to it?

I know you’re thinking to yourself that there is more to it than this. Perhaps. However, I challenge you to think about the last two or three meetings you’ve sat through that didn’t follow this pattern of identifying the problem, discovering the solutions and the implementation of the solution.

How did it go?

Did you feel like you were wasting your time?

The Challenge

If you’ve felt like your agenda is bloated or you and your meeting participants are distracted, I invite you to consider whittling everything down to the barest bones you can and only focusing on those three questions for each agenda item.

Commit to each other that you will not deviate from that item to move on to the next one until you’ve completed the three tasks. If you can’t find a person to execute on the solution, table the item, but come back to it soon without deviation. If you can’t identify which solution it is that you need to implement, make a decision to head in a certain direction and you will discover if you and your team need to pivot.

The one question you must spend your time on most of all is the first question. If you’re unwilling to identify the key and most pressing problem inhibiting your organization’s success, be prepared to flounder at best and fail at worst.

IF YOU FIND YOU’RE IN NEED OF ASSISTANCE IN HOW TO DEVELOP MORE MEANINGFUL SKILLS IN CONNECTING WITH OTHERS, OR IF YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO NEEDS HELP, PLEASE CONTACT ME BY CLICKING HERE.