Nothing can frustrate your staff more than a meeting that could have been accomplished via email. It wastes valuable time and resources, eroding trust and culture. This often happens when meetings are held out of habit rather than necessity.
If you find that your staff is less than enthusiastic about attending meetings, prepare to ask an honest question: Are our meetings as effective as they could be? As an administrator and school leader, continually be open to feedback, even if it isn’t always positive.
A productive meeting is one where teams collaborate on a project, ongoing initiative, or campaign. It can also be a time when teams connect and share updates on progress.
When you call a meeting, everyone in the room devotes their valuable time—time taken from other responsibilities. How do you ensure that time is well-spent?
Why Meetings Often Don’t Produce Results
If you don’t think through the following issues, you might end up with an ineffective meeting.
- Purpose. For a meeting to be productive, it must have a purpose. Your school’s mission statement is a guide for everything you work to accomplish. The reason for a meeting should be clear and related to the mission statement.
- Attendees. When it comes to who is invited, ensure only essential team members attend.
- Timing. Timing of meetings is crucial. At the wrong time of day, your group may be exhausted.
- Total Time Spent. Take a hard look at how much time your staff spends in meetings over the course of the week. How many meetings are held, and for how long? Is it reasonable for this group to meet this often?
What Defines an Effective Meeting?
There are three basic criteria for effective meetings.
- Performance. There should be valuable output from the meeting that offsets the time spent by the staff involved. If there isn’t a clear outcome, that time and energy was wasted.
- Process. This refers to the meeting's structure and the framework used to ensure the group continues to produce results. A process guides the group to work together for solutions.
- Growth-oriented. Meetings should not be a chore. The group experience must contribute to the growth and well-being of its members.
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Preparation Is Critical
The meeting leader should spend two minutes preparing for every minute of a scheduled meeting. Yes, that means an hour of prep time for a 30-minute meeting. If you have a meeting scheduled and lack the time to prepare for it, cancel it! Meetings do not go well when the leader isn’t prepared.
Creating the meeting agenda
Your first step in preparing for a meeting is creating an agenda. The agenda provides structure and clearly identifies the staff who should attend.
There are many ways to go wrong when it comes to setting your agenda. Much like a meeting being held simply for the sake of having a meeting, using the same templated agenda for every meeting is as useless as having no agenda at all. Your group needs to understand what they should aim to achieve—and that changes from week to week. Create a unique agenda for every meeting.
Another common agenda mistake? Scheduling an hour-long meeting and then building the agenda to fit within that hour. Instead, create the agenda first and set the meeting time based on what you’ve set out to accomplish.
What does the ideal agenda look like?
Almost every meeting should kick off with welcoming the attendees and introducing anyone new. This should not exceed five minutes.
The next item should be a 10-minute recap of what happened the last time the group met and where the group is now.
The meeting's main purpose should comprise 60% of the meeting time. Spend the most time on the most important item, saving any administrivia until after the group has completed working on the main goal.
Finally, you want to end with reinforcement. Review next steps; ensure everyone knows what is expected for the next meeting. This should not take more than five minutes.
Once you have your agenda prepared, send it before the meeting. You can also create and include succinct briefing papers or a basic background of the issue at hand. If attendees receive these materials before the meeting, everyone can begin on the same page.
The importance of preparation for effective meetings cannot be overstated. Your prep work must include time management for you and the attendees, a narrow focus to ensure the people who are there need to be there, and a detailed agenda that structures the meeting most efficiently.
Meetings are a powerful tool for collaboration when used effectively. Ensure you are prepared to conduct a meeting that produces results.
