Meetings - Five Tips On How To Handle Them

Having worked at a company where there was a culture of having no meetings at all I can confirm that there are some advantages to having meetings.  A regular time where you can bring up and hear things that matter is valuable, and you need some kind of official news source to counteract the rumour mill that operates really well.  But nonetheless nearly everybody agrees that meetings are not productive.  Here are my tips for getting the most out of them culled from over twenty years of boredom, frustration and general confusion.


1. Don't play the Blame Game.

Successfully revealing the shortcomings of a useless co-worker in front of senior managers is one of life's great pleasures.  Unless you work with paragons of virtue it is also often a good way to advance your career, in the short run.

The trouble is that this gladiatorial approach to meetings is really really resource hungry.  You will devote huge amounts of mental energy to it.   And in a year's time the chances are that nobody will remember anything you have achieved as a result of al that work.  I have done a fair bit of the corridor warrior thing, and I don't look back on any of it as a real achievement.  It is also the ultimate non-transferable achievement.  You can hardly use your success in getting one over on your colleagues to fill your CV.   And the people you have turned over this time are quite likely to come back wiser, craftier and angrier next time.  Are you sure you can win every session?

Much better to devote your energy to creating value that you can associate with yourself.

2. Get as much information as possible on what you are asked to do.

Meetings are always much longer than anyone intends them.  If you are coming out of a meeting with an action, spend the time to get as much detail as you can about what you are being asked to do.  Write it down and read it back.  Get as much clarification as you can even if you think you know what is meant.  There is a good chance the person asking you to do something has only a hazy idea themselves.  A detailed instruction fully discussed is going to be much easier to carry out.

3. Don't agree to write the minutes, and don't read them when they come out.

If you want a truly soul destroying task, write the minutes of a meeting.  Nobody will remember what they have said.   Lots of people are very concerned about how minutes make them look.  If you are the author be prepared for a lot of feedback from the disgruntled.  Don't waste time by looking at a set of meetings for how it makes you look.  Everybody else is just reading the bits about themselves.

4. Write down a list of your actions.

Write down what you have agreed to do in the meeting and work from it.  This is a much better way to get on than waiting for the minutes to come out.  It is sometimes a good idea to send your notes to the person compiling the minutes.  There is a good chance that they will simply use them verbatim.

5. Treat completing your actions as part of the meeting wherever possible.

Often the first item on the agenda are action points from previous meetings.  Inevitably someone won't have done something they were supposed to do.   Don't be that person.  The meeting has already taken up a big chunk of time, you may as well simply get right on and do your actions as soon as the meeting has finished and before you get back to real life.   The advantages of this are many, but the smug feeling of knowing that you won't be the one coming with the excuses at the next meeting is probably the biggest.


Meetings can be horrible.  They are usually pointless.  To get anything at all out of them is an achievement.  Savour it if you ever do.


Photo credit: Phil Sexton via photopin cc