Stop Wasting Time in Meetings by Asking Yourself These Questions in Advance
If you’re not very lucky (or just very young), you’ve most likely spent precious hours of your life in meetings that either lasted too long or didn’t have to happen at all.
It should not be. We’ve spent a lot of time discussing ways to hone your meeting technique, and a lot of it boils down to a set of foundations. Namely: always set the agenda, be prepared to bring people back to the topic, set aside a certain amount of time for each topic so that things don’t drag out, etc.
And still! Not everyone in the world has learned these key truths, and we still often find ourselves in meetings that lack focus, take too long, or fail to accomplish what they set out to do. Therefore, we highly appreciated the recent blog post by writer and speaker Seth Godin with a short checklist of questions you should be able to answer ahead of time about the meeting to make it worthwhile. Of them:
- Is there a specific person in charge of the meeting?
- Is there a desired outcome of the meeting that is clear to all participants?
- Other than holding a meeting, is there a better way to continue with the task at hand?
- Does everyone have all the information they need in advance?
Other items on the checklist include ensuring that the appropriate amount of time (not too much or too little) is allocated for the meeting in question, and that everyone who needs to be present to be productive is there.
Based on personal experience, a few other key questions to add to the checklist are:
- Is there someone in the meeting who doesn’t need to be present (and whose time is best spent elsewhere)?
- Who will be responsible for completing the items after the meeting?
- How long does it take to adequately address each agenda item?
Of course, the most planned meeting in the world can slip off the rails if someone gets stuck or talks too long, so the person hosting the meeting should be willing (politely) to turn off people and move the focus back to where it was. should be (“We need to move on” – the sweetest words in the English language). If you have any surefire methods to avoid the hell of wasting time at meetings, by all means, leave them in the comments. This is a great moment and we will have time to respond to questions and suggestions as soon as we consider the rest of today’s agenda.