Thirty plus years in business, and I’ve been in a lot of meetings. I’ve run my fair share too. Meetings are a necessary part of business, enabling communication, teamwork, and dissemination and sharing of vital information.
A lot have been disastrous: wasting time, venting sessions, boredom-fests, daydreaming periods, and people doodling pictures of where they’d like to be right now.
Hint: it’s NOT in this meeting.
A friend of mine who’s a free-diver used to practice holding his breath when meetings got horrible. I’m sure you’ve had your share, too. Ugh.
In today’s (broadcast) email-centric communications world, face to face meetings are downplayed in favor of electronic communication. It’s easier. It’s quicker. It’s its own record-keeper. Makes sense, right?
No.
People have been gathering, getting together, sharing ideas and common goals for thousands of years. Tribes. Churches. Armies. Neighborhoods. Schools. There’s one fundamental reason.
People work with people.
Face-to-face is THE most effective way of communicating with others. There are so many non-verbal cues like tone and pitch of voice, eye movements, body language, breathing styles, and others that simply cannot be transmitted through the wires.
Regularly-scheduled meetings also become rituals – part of the core of the operations of the business. That can be good or bad!
I used to have a weekly Monday morning sales meeting at my company at 8:30. It got people there, laid out the agenda and pertinent information for the week, and kicked the week off with some direction. Management meetings were at lunchtime on Mondays, and we had food delivered. Same reasons.
And on Friday afternoons at 4:30 pm, because manager often spend a lot of their week solving problems, we had a weekly mandatory management “Good News” call, that had us all headed home for the weekend filled with good things that had happened that week. Each manager had to bring two items of good news, and no negative information was discussed.
So what turns meetings into disastrous wastes of time? What’s the #1 meeting killer?
Lack of leadership. Period.
These are key ingredients of effective meetings I have use and recommend. Stick with these guidelines and avoid boring, wasteful meetings.
What do you think? Good advice? Pass it along! What else would you add?
Make it a great day!
–Rick
The post The #1 Meeting Killer, and What to Do About It – Podcast 49 appeared first on Business by Day with Rick Day.
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More