With the holidays behind us and a new year before us, chances are you’re coming back to work and will have a few (or more) meetings on your calendar: committee meetings to further policy work, team meetings to check that everyone is on track, management meetings to report back that everyone is on track, and planning meetings to get projects nailed down for the upcoming year.

Let’s pause for a moment to take a fresh look at meetings and the amount of time we spend in meetings each week. Let’s also commit to making four resolutions that will get your meetings off on the right foot.

Resolution #1: Don’t meet just for the sake of meeting

With most of us trying to fit more work into our day, one less meeting a week can free up valuable time. Stop and ask yourself if you are meeting just for the sake of meeting. I’ve been to countless meetings simply because they were on the calendar. We came, we sat, we listened to the same people update the same information as last month. Many of us sit there physically, but mentally we are compiling our to-do lists and reviewing the dozen things that we should really be doing with our time. Often when it comes to regular meetings we get caught up in the fact that it’s the fourth Tuesday of the month so we have to meet, rather than the fact that there are important items to discuss. It’s okay to question whether those regular meetings are necessary.

If cancelling the meeting isn’t an option, be clear on what outcomes are to be achieved by holding the meeting. Don’t leave it to chance that each participant will intuitively understand what the purpose is. If it’s to determine which three grant opportunities to focus the fundraising team’s time and energy on in the next quarter, then state that and develop the agenda in a way that will get you to the decisions that need to be made. This leads us to our second resolution — setting the agenda.

Resolution #2: Create a better agenda

Creating a better agenda goes a long way towards creating a better meeting — think of your agenda as the backbone of your meeting. There are items that are common to most agendas, things like “Call to Order,” “Approve Agenda,” and “Adjournment.” It’s easy to know where those items go, but what about everything else?

Prioritize agenda items. Which ones do you need to cover to achieve desired outcomes? Chances are you’ll want those items near the top. Unfortunately, a practice I have bumped into many times is “first in, first up.” Just because an item was the first to be submitted does not automatically grant it top billing on the agenda. You should start with the outcome that needs to be achieved and determine which items need to be explored in order to achieve that result.

To delve a little deeper into this idea of outcomes, approach each agenda item with the Ladder of Participation in mind. What is the level of involvement sought for each item? Is it sharing information provided as “FYI”? Is it a consultation as in “we need to know x before we go away to another meeting and make a decision that you are not involved in”? Is it involving the meeting participants in the decision-making process or making them solely responsible for the decision?

Meetings get off track when the participants are not clear what their expected level of participation is. And the level of participation will vary by agenda item. When you are prioritizing your agenda items, keep in mind the overall outcomes to be achieved by the meeting, consider the level of involvement in decision-making needed, and don’t forget to allocate an appropriate amount of time for each item.

Having been a part of too many meetings that ran into overtime, I want to stress a couple of points about agendas and timing. First, an important decision will likely not be made without significant discussion — even if you wish that was the case. Schedule ample time for these discussions. If, when you are plotting out your agenda items, you find you’ve come to the end of the allotted time before you’ve come to the end of the list of proposed agenda items, take a second look at your stated outcome. Perhaps you have items that are extraneous or irrelevant or that are better suited to a future meeting or another agenda altogether.

Resolution #3: Get the right people in the room

Many of us have been stuck in meetings that have little or no relevance to the work we do. It’s frustrating to know that we could have made more productive use of our time had we joined the meeting for only designated agenda items or been released from the meeting once any relevant agenda items had concluded. One way to counter that when creating agendas is to consider who needs to be at the meeting and for what parts of it.

All too often, meetings take place, discussions occur and then final decisions end up being deferred because the person with the authority to make the decision isn’t in attendance. If the decision-maker isn’t present that day but normally would have been, then that item should have be carried forward to another meeting. On the other hand, if the decision-maker would not normally have even been at the meeting, then that item is on the wrong agenda altogether. Before you even get to that stage, you sometimes need to send items back to the submitter. Either the item is not going to have the right audience at that meeting or it’s not possible to get the right people in the room. It’s better to capture that up front before time is misspent.

When it comes to getting the right people in the room, certain times of the year seem to be quite problematic. Vacation season, flu season, the times around school start up or year-end can be particularly challenging. At what point do you make the decision to postpone or cancel an agenda item or meeting? Here are some questions to help you make that decision:

• For information items: is there an alternative method for people to get the information?
• For discussion items: will there be sufficient perspectives represented at the meeting?
• For items requiring recommended actions: is there a diversity of wisdom available?
• For items requiring a decision: will the decision-makers be there?

If the answer is no – you should defer the items or reschedule the meeting.

One way to make sure you have the right people in the room is to offer a phone-in option. Because of restricted time and dollars, it has become a common occurrence for people to attend meetings by phone. However, when you are attending a meeting where most participants are in person and one or more have called in, it can be easy to forget the folks on the phone.

In order to include remote participants effectively, consider investing in a speakerphone that has a multi-directional microphone. For those times when you have a remote participate who is unfamiliar with all of the voices in the room, establish the practice of having participants state their names first when speaking. Take greater care not to talk over each other and take deliberate steps not to rely on facial expressions or body language as that is feedback not available to the person on the phone.

Resolution #4: Refresh the meeting guidelines

You just read that resolution and thought, “Refresh them…what on earth are they?” Meeting guidelines can also be called group norms, working assumptions, or ground rules. If you don’t already have meeting guidelines, it’s not too late to create them. Perhaps you are fortunate in that you’ve never needed them because at your meeting participants don’t engage in bad meeting behaviours. More likely, you’ve got a decent group, but once in a while things can get heated when people have strong opinions. Even if your group is established, it is still a good idea create some ground rules for meeting behaviours because at some point challenging behaviours will occur.

As teams evolve, so does the need for different meeting guidelines. Faces around the table change with time, so do group dynamics. When new people are added to the mix, the climate shifts — sometimes this is for the better, sometimes not. Previously, you might not have needed a ground rule that explicitly stated “Have respect for other people’s perspectives.” Now that the group is shifting itself to include new faces, respect for differing opinions has become a challenge. With every significant change to a group, take time to revisit the meeting guidelines and make adjustments as necessary. Even if your group’s membership is static, it is a good idea to refresh or reconfirm the ground rules annually.

Something that I get asked about frequently is what to do in situations where the meeting chair or the boss is the one not adhering to the meeting guidelines. It’s a tricky situation if the group is not empowered to directly call that person out on their behaviour. If the opportunity exists, make the meeting guidelines an agenda item so that group discussion can occur and the matter of applying the ground rules fairly can be agreed upon. If the relationship exists, a participant could grab a moment of the meeting chair’s (or boss’) attention and respectfully remind them of the meeting rules. If the situation is in a place where neither of those ideas are realistic, it might be time to invite the participation of a meeting facilitator.

When it comes to making your meeting better you don’t have to make a big change to make a big difference. Indeed, New Year’s resolutions that involve smaller changes are easier to keep. So before you book that next meeting, take a moment to determine if it is really necessary. If it is, build a better agenda by recognizing what level of participation each item requires. Consider who needs to be in attendance for a successful resolution of each agenda item. Remember that sometimes “in attendance” means on the phone and participants calling in require different considerations. Finally, take time to either refresh or create meeting guidelines so that bad meeting behaviours can be minimized. Resolve to make your meetings better this year.

Karyn Dumble is a Certified Professional Facilitator and the principal consultant of The Monarch Park Group, a facilitation company that helps organizations get their meetings back on track. Karyn spent many years working in nonprofits developing their capacity for grassroots community building. She continues to work with groups to help them become forward thinking teams. Karyn can be reached at 647-234-7726, e-mail karyn@themonarchparkgroup.ca, Twitter @iFacilitate, or visit www.themonarchparkgroup.ca.