Picture this: you sit in a meeting for thirty minutes to an hour only to walk out of the room or hang up the call with zero valuable takeaways or an action plan for what to do next. Unfortunately, this is all too common in business.

While the amount of time Americans spend in meetings has been steadily increasing, productivity hasn’t. In fact, a report from the project management company TeamStage revealed that the majority of employees surveyed said their meetings are a waste of time.

Meetings can be an enormously valuable way to connect with your people, solve problems, and set new goals—but they can also be a huge time suck and drain on resources if you’re not careful. The tips that follow can help you identify and reduce common pain points in your meetings, making your teams and your business more efficient and successful.

Email vs. meeting

Before you hit Send on your meeting invite, ask yourself one simple question: Could your goal be accomplished without a meeting? If the answer is yes, develop a plan with action points and delivery dates, and send your team the important details via email. Include a note at the bottom explaining how they should follow up with you or another point person regarding any questions they may have.

If a meeting is necessary, you’ll want to follow a similar process and establish an agenda before sending any invites. The purpose of this is twofold: to set the stage and help participants prepare before the meeting and to keep everyone on track during it. Here are some best practices for creating an effective meeting agenda:

• Set clear expectations for the meeting. Include all notes and information necessary to both help participants prepare and spark valuable discussion.
• Make sure any other facilitators are aware of their roles and what expectations you have of them beforehand.
• Be flexible, leaving room for additional discussions (within reason). If a participant brings up a valuable point to add to the agenda that is within the scope of the project or goal, be sure to add it before the meeting.

Minutes matter

It’s important to be respectful of everyone’s time. A meeting that begins five minutes after the set start time or lasts ten minutes longer than intended is guaranteed to put people off, increase distraction, and reduce productivity. Set a clear start time and end time, and stick to them as much as possible. As the host, you should plan to arrive at or sign on to the meeting a few minutes in advance to ensure you and your team are ready to start on time.

There’s also no reason why a well-planned meeting would need to last longer than an hour. According to the American Psychological Association, the engagement of participants starts to dramatically decrease the longer any meeting goes on. That means every minute of your meeting should be put to good use. Creating an agenda can help with this, but only if you stick to it. It’s also beneficial to foster engagement by allowing participants to ask questions and encouraging those who don’t often speak up to do so. However, be mindful about reining in the conversation if it moves away from the points outlined in your agenda. The longer you allow it to go off topic, the harder it will be to bring it back to the main talking points.

Actionable takeaways

Every person at your meeting should come away from it with a task to accomplish, and it’s even better if you can give them an idea of what that will be ahead of time. Break down your meeting goals into smaller pieces that can then be delegated, asking yourself how each participant can contribute in a way that is actionable and measurable. For example, if you’re meeting to discuss a sales target for the next quarter, you could give your marketing lead a game plan for how many new leads they will need to acquire and deliver to the sales team over the next few months. Your creative lead could then have an action item to develop a set amount of new lead magnets to bring in those leads, while your sales lead could get a quota for how many calls their team needs to make to bring in the necessary number of sales per day to reach the quarterly goal.

Of course, not every meeting will have a groundbreaking objective, and that’s OK. Regardless of the size of your goal, everyone at your meeting should walk away with a clear understanding of exactly what they need to do next, how to follow up with you on their progress, and when they need to have the task completed. Be sure to encourage participants to revisit their action items shortly after the meeting is over so they can think critically about the next steps while the meeting’s discussion is still fresh in their minds.

Running meetings is an essential component of being a leader, but, like all other aspects of your role, it might take some time to get it right. If you’ve been holding the same meeting every week for three months and have very little progress to show for it, talk with your employees about what is and isn’t working. And don’t be afraid to cancel or switch up the format of your meetings, either by having them occur less frequently or by including different team members. You and your team will be better off for it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Luke Acree is an authority on leadership, a lead-generation specialist, and a referral expert who has helped more than 100,000 entrepreneurs and small businesses grow their companies. He hosts Stay Paid, a sales and marketing podcast, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Foundr.com.

TAKE ACTION:
Review the upcoming meetings on your calendar. Create agendas for each, and remove any you no longer deem necessary.