Lately, I've been in a bunch of meetings that were not very productive. Since the promotion, I seem to be in even more meetings than usual despite the fact I am trying to delegate more and more. One of the jobs I have tried to delegate, unsuccessfully, is to not run meetings anymore. I have tried to stay on the side and not get directly involved with running the meeting but I have had to step in and do it.
One thing that most meetings fail on is that not having a plan when you get there. This is not even about having an agenda. I can forgive that. But you absolutely need to understand why you called the meeting and what you hope to accomplish in it. Most of the time, if you are focused, you can get in and out of the meeting quickly. But when you just have a meeting where you have to talk about a problem, and you do not understand what you actually want decided, you are wasting time.
This is especially crucial for someone like me who has lots of meetings throughout the day. This has further importance if you call a lot of meetings. If you are someone who has this responsibility, believe me on this. You are being judged by how effective your meeting is. If your meetings tend to be scattered, if you are unprepared, or if you do not have control of your meeting, people are noticing. If you cannot demonstrate leadership of a meeting, how is anyone expected to believe you can lead a team?
Need I say "meeting department"???
ReplyDeletewhen I am stuck in meetings, I often think of you and the idea of the meeting department.
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