imapMyTeam Blog

Are you Meeting the Needs of the Meeting?

Almost everyone has a complaint about meetings.

Some are legitimate, some are not. Meetings are important, but it IS hard to plan and conduct them in a manner that meets all of the participant’s expectations. Go too ‘fast’ – some people will think you are not giving important topics the time they require. Go too ‘slow’ – some people think you are wasting time that could be used elsewhere.

What is the balance?

Popular opinion is that meetings are one of the least productive business activities . But if you are running an effective meeting and you are keeping each of the participants fully involved and engaged you can have a very positive impact on what gets done – that just might trickle down to your bottom line.

The first step in improving the efficiency of your meetings is to recognize that meetings are a collaborative effort and all of the attendees come to the meeting with certain expectations. When those expectations are consistently unmet the attendee will begin to slip into unproductive behaviors and disrupt the meeting.

You can consider this behavior to be a warning shot to get your attention – and a chance to course correct. As you already understand from other imapMyTeam reports there is a direct correlation between unmet needs and the resulting reactive behavior. If you see any of the behaviors described in the Slow Down the Meeting report – there is a reason why and a chance to fix it before your meeting is the topic of the next ‘water cooler meeting’.