From good to great meetings – 7 practical tips to run productive and engaging meetings

According to research, managers spend up to 80% of their work time in meetings. You probably attended already one, maybe even more, meetings today. Were they productive, or rather useless and a waste of your time? Meetings can be toxic, or a torture as highlighted by The Economist, but with some simple steps you will be able to make the best out of your next team meetings.

Get the basics right!

There are a lot of good tips in a recent blog post from Corporate Rebels and in a LinkedIn Article from Steven Rogelberg to get the basics right.

For instance, call meetings only when necessary. If there are no interactions, discussions, or solution generation required, you may rather choose another communication vehicle. Set clear goals and desired outcomes in your agenda and rather than just listing topics (e.g. budgetary constraints) consider framing it as a question (e.g. how will we reduce our budget by 50K by the end of the quarter?). And some more basics tips: Shorten the list of attendees and the meeting time, turn on video, actively encourage everyone to participate, intervene if the discussions derail, and do not end the meeting before action items and their owners are clarified.

However, in order to make meetings an awesome experience, where people actually look forward to being in, you need to go way beyond the basics.

From good to great meetings!

What makes a meeting really productive is mostly how participants show up and interact with each other. The below ideas should help you to create conditions that allow for focused attention and deeper connection between participants to run meetings your team will remember as especially powerful.

1. Establish a space that is safe!

According to a recent HBR article, the first step for running good meetings is to establish a space that is safe enough for people to speak their minds, where they feel they will be treated with respect, and where they are confident that no one in the meeting will embarrass or punish them for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.

But how do you create safety? According to Google’s famous Project Aristotle by acknowledging your own fallibility, by modeling curiosity, and asking lots of questions.

In practice this may mean to set some ground rules like: be honest, listening actively (be open-minded to other ideas and ask questions for clarification and understanding), criticize the idea not the person, use “I” statements (speak from your own), encourage participants who don’t talk much to “step up” (speak up, participate), and those who participate a lot to “step back” (say less) to make room for everyone’s opinions.

If we want people to fully show up, to bring their whole selves to meetings – so that we can innovate, solve problems, and serve people – we must be vigilant, about creating a culture in which people feel safe, seen, heard, and respected.

 2. Give Permission!

What permission would you like from the group so that you can lead a meeting effectively? What permission does the group need from the leader so that they can successfully participate?

Brené Brown highlights in her book “Dare to Lead” a ritual they call “permission slips”. Each meeting member writes down one thing they give themselves permission to do or to feel for during the meeting (e.g. “I give myself permission to ask more time to think about something before I share my point of view”, “I listen with passion”). As a meeting leader you may ask for permission to keep conversations on track, call on people that have not yet spoken, and holding people back, if they are dominating the discussions. And you would like to empower the team by reminding them that they have permission to ask questions at any time and express concerns if issues haven’t been fully addressed.

3. Allow the audience to be fully present!

Usually attendees run from meeting to meeting and might not be able to focus their attention on yours right away. Hence, a mindful snack or a one-minute meditation might help to ensure everyone is fully present before you start your meeting. So, how do you do that? You simply ask the attendees to briefly focus on their breath. A typical “session” would go like:

No matter what is ongoing in your life right now, no matter how many thoughts are racing around your mind, no matter how your body is currently feeling…Just take a moment to sit down, your feet on the ground, spine straight, relax, and take a big deep breath, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. As you breath in with a sense of taking in fresh air, lungs expanding, and breathing out with a sense of letting go of stress in your body and your mind, just feel the muscles soften and relax. If you like, close your eyes for a moment, for just a few more breaths, breathing deeply through the nose and out through your mouth. Allow your thoughts to come and go, taking a few more breath, and gently opening your eyes again.

This may require some courage the first time you introduce it and might be best prepared by alerting the audience in a previous meeting that this is coming. But this little practice will refresh the attendees instantly and they will be able to be fully present during your meeting. Give it a try!

4. Create Connection!

According to Brené Brown (“Dare to Lead”) you should start the meeting with a gratitude check. This is everyone shares one thing they are grateful for or one good thing they have experienced this day. It could be something like “someone held the elevator doors for me on the way to work” to “I closed a huge client deal that I’ve been working on for months”. This will build trust and puts the team in a more positive space as you start the meeting and it creates more connection as you learn something personal about each other and appreciate what each person shares.

5. Assign a Yoda!

Driving engagement and honest discussions can sometimes be difficult especially when running virtual meetings. It might be very helpful, therefore to assign a “Yoda” according to Keith Ferrazzi.

Like the wise Jedi master in Star Wars, the “Yoda” keeps attendees in line and makes sure everyone stays active and on the topic. At critical points during the meeting you could turn to the “Yoda” and ask questions like “what do you think has not been said so far?”, or “what is the temperature on the call right now?”. This would allow the “Yoda” to express what may be going on in the meeting, but has not yet surfaced, and would encourage the group to take some risks.

6. Warm-up the right brain!

Especially for meetings that require a lot of creativity you should start the meeting by letting everybody draw something. I got this tip from Ayse Birsel’s book “Design the life you love”. Pick something to draw (e.g. someone sitting across from you, a plant, something natural). Don’t worry, nobody will see the picture you and others are drawing and there is no grading or judgement, just draw to activate your right brain. It is like warming up your body before exercising.

7. Pause and Reflect!

When the meeting is over, take a few minutes to reflect. Did everyone participate? Were people distracted? What worked well, and what didn’t? Use your reflections and potentially ask others for their thoughts to keep improving for next time.

While not all tips may work on all meetings, they still should enable you to have more productive, more engaging meetings that your team will remember.

Meetings can generate creativity, effective discussions, new ideas, solve problems, or ensure important decisions are made. Make the best out of them!

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Need more mindful tips? Check out my article “Need instant refreshment? 7 tips that will work for you too!” and “Mindfulness at work”.

Volker Hack is an Executive Director at one of the largest Contract Research Organizations and dedicated to Improve Health. He is an advocate for incorporating mindfulness into the work life.