The Power of Purposeful Meetings: A Guide to Running Effective Sessions

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. ~ Robert Frost

The Power of Purposeful Meetings: A Guide to Running Effective Sessions

If you’ve worked in higher education for any amount of time, and particularly if you’ve been a manager for any amount of time, you go to a LOT of meetings.  As an experiment one semester, I’m a doodler at in person meetings, I started a little experiment.  I split every hour into four blocks of fifteen minutes each.  Then for each fifteen minute block, I’d check the box if I felt that fifteen minute block was productive.  After tracking all of this for a semester I came out with a very interesting ratio.  That ratio was that one out of every seven hours of meeting time, roughly 15% was actually productive.  It was a depressing, but not surprising outcome. 

Given this reality I’ve always made it a point, as a person who not just attends, but runs a lot of meetings to make sure I blew that ratio out of the water in my own meetings.  And over my career, it’s been one of the things I’ve received the most compliments on as a manager.  People appreciate that my meetings are concise, focused, have clear agendas and are run with purpose in mind.  The goal is always to not waste people’s time and people appreciate that.  On that point, the first thing I want to say about meetings is this, don’t meet if you don’t need to.  Sounds like common sense but how many times have you sat in a meeting and thought, this could or should have been an email.  Just because you have a meeting scheduled weekly, doesn’t mean it has to meet every week.  If what needs to occur can be summed up quickly and neatly in an email, send an email and don’t waste people’s time.  One of my pet peeves is when someone schedules a meeting, doesn’t send out an agenda, and then you get there and they say, well didn’t really have anything but wanted to check-in and see if you have anything.  Which inevitably leads to some random and generally useless conversation and a waste of people’s time.

In this blog post, we’ll start by exploring the importance of meetings and discuss practical tips on how to conduct them efficiently.

The Importance of Meetings:

1. Communication and Collaboration: Meetings serve as a vital platform for effective communication. They allow team members to exchange ideas, share updates, and discuss important matters face-to-face (or virtually). This fosters collaboration, helping teams stay aligned with organizational goals.
2. Decision-Making: Meetings provide a structured environment for decision-making. Complex issues often require input from multiple team members, and meetings offer a forum for discussion, debate, and ultimately, decision-making.
3. Problem-Solving: When challenges arise, meetings become a forum for brainstorming and problem-solving. The collective intelligence of a team can be harnessed to find innovative solutions to issues that may be hindering progress.
4. Building Relationships: Meetings are not just about the agenda items; they’re also about building relationships. Face-to-face interactions humanize the work environment, helping team members understand each other better and fostering a sense of camaraderie.
5. Accountability: Meetings provide an opportunity for team members to be accountable for their tasks and responsibilities. Regular check-ins ensure that everyone is on the same page regarding progress, challenges, and timelines.

So meetings serve a purpose to both help integrate and solidify the team as well as provide an opportunity to plan, problem solve and help the institution achieve its goals.  Which in the case of an institution of higher education, that goal is to help students succeed and achieve their goals.  So what does and effective meeting look like.

Tips for Running Effective Meetings:

1. Set Clear Objectives: Define the purpose of the meeting and communicate it in advance. Clearly outline the agenda to provide participants with a roadmap for the discussion.  And make sure the agenda comes out at least 24 hours before the meeting.  Also make it clear how people can contribute to that agenda.
2. Invite Relevant Participants: Keep the attendee list focused on those who can contribute meaningfully to the discussion. This ensures that the meeting remains efficient and on-topic.  And so if there is a standing group and meeting, and an issue comes up that is really most appropriately dealt with by a sub-group of the overall group, then call a separate meeting for that, don’t subject the overall group to a sub group level discussion as it just wastes the non-relevant participants’ time.
3. Use Technology Wisely: Leverage technology to facilitate virtual meetings, but be mindful of potential technical issues. Familiarize participants with the chosen platform beforehand to minimize disruptions.  In the current era of Zoom, this is not as big an issue as it used to be, however don’t get too enamored with technology.  Right now Jam Boards are all the rage and often people just integrate them because they are the cool new way to get participation, but often they’re just a way to fill time in an ineffective meeting.
4. Time Management: Respect participants’ time by starting and ending the meeting on schedule. Keep discussions focused and allocate time appropriately for each agenda item. This is a huge issue at colleges, at several colleges I’ve worked at, every meeting starts five minutes late consistently.  So people stop showing up on time.  Then, if every meeting starts with some sort of ice breaker, the fact is, the meeting really doesn’t start until 10 or 15 minutes after the start time.  So people come in late, then the time set aside for agenda items is blown and the meeting becomes ineffective.  Start on time, if you’re consistent with this, people will show up on time.  And rarely go over time, if people do stay they are likely distracted thinking about where they should be heading next.
5. Ice Breakers: If you are bringing together a group for the first time, an ice breaker is nice.  If you’re really needing to build community then ice breakers with the purpose of people getting to know each other are a good idea.  But too often, a group that has been meeting for an entire year, eats up the first ten or fifteen minutes discussing some random candy they are nostalgic about or what movie they’ve recently seen.  And really it’s just a time spanner to let people show up late and not miss the business of the meeting.
6. Encourage Participation: Foster an environment where all participants feel comfortable sharing their thoughts. Encourage active participation and diverse perspectives to enrich the discussion.  This of course comes with basic communication management skills, don’t shut people down unless there is a really good reason, encourage divergent ideas, don’t let one or two individuals dominate every conversation.  Lead people who you believe have valid input into the conversation.  Always keep the conversation focused on the goal and about the idea, not as a platform for people to show off or just demonstrate how smart they are about things. 
7. Follow Up: Summarize key takeaways and action items at the end of the meeting. Share meeting minutes promptly and follow up on action items to ensure accountability.  Always remember to start the next meeting by reporting out the action taken on the action items from the last meeting.  Make sure meeting notes are complete but not verbose or exceedingly long.  Unless you are under regulation, law or licensing that requires it, you don’t have transcript the meeting.
8. Evaluate and Adapt: Periodically assess the effectiveness of your meetings. Solicit feedback from participants and be open to making adjustments to improve future sessions.

Meetings, when conducted purposefully and effectively, play a crucial role in driving organizational success. By embracing best practices and fostering a culture of effective communication, teams can transform meetings from mundane obligations into powerful tools for collaboration and innovation. And most of all, not waste people’s time.