The 4 Keys to Crushing Meandering Meetings

Does this sound familiar? 

You have an 11 AM meeting. You get there on time, but multiple people trickle in late, including the person who called it. That person gets settled and tells everyone, “We’re going to give everyone a few more minutes to join us.” 

The meeting starts ten minutes late. 

When it does, it lacks an agenda or any tangible outcomes, so you’re not sure what the goals of the meeting are. The person leading it does very little to build camaraderie or to celebrate the team. There’s no talk of the impact you all are trying to make, and there are no shout-outs. 

Twenty minutes into the meeting, it feels like you’ve been there for an hour. Very few voices have been heard, there’s almost no staff-to-staff interaction, and you still have very little idea of what the point of the meeting is. 

The end of the meeting is nowhere in sight, and as people ask questions that have nothing to do with your work and others share off-topic, you start to feel like you’re being held hostage. You’re angry about having your time wasted like this. 

Some of your colleagues are on their phones or typing away on their computers. You want to assume the best, but when another person in the meeting sends you an email about something unrelated, you realize that half the room is totally disengaged. 

Noon comes and goes, despite the meeting being called for an hour. The person leading doesn’t mention the time or ask anyone if staying a little longer works for them. You’re now late to your next meeting, and you’ll be late to everything all day as a result of this pointless, meandering meeting.  

The meeting, finally, mercifully ends. No next steps are shared, there’s nothing to take action on, you don’t know where you all stand in terms of your goals and priorities, and you feel like the entire thing could’ve been an email. 

You’ve likely experienced this as an employee. The question is, are you perpetuating any of this as a leader? If you are, you need to break the cycle. These four keys will help you do this immediately. 

Key #1 - Start and End on Time: 

Many leaders think they’re showing compassion by being okay with team members trickling in after the meeting is scheduled to start. The team is busy after all. The problem is that this sets the tone for your staff and for your partners that timeliness here doesn’t matter. If not checked, this filters into every aspect of the organization. Deadlines start to feel like suggestions. Expectations start to feel like “nice to haves.” 

Maybe more importantly, being okay with some team members arriving late is rewarding bad behavior at the expense of the people who do show up on time. People who are equally busy. Who start to think, “Why should I race here when others aren’t? Maybe I should slack off too.” 

Being on time is easy. Creating impact can often be hard. You have to be able to do the easy stuff or the hard stuff will be that much harder. 

Also, meetings that start late tend to end late. This drives employees who care about timeliness crazy as it can push back their entire day. They’re forced to play catch-up and apologize to other team members and employees, not because they missed the ball, but because you did. 

As a side note: keeping the team late when you all are highly engaged in problem-solving or strategizing is one thing. Keeping them late because the meeting started late and because no one is cognizant of time is unfair. If you do need to keep the team late, ask permission. Yes, you’re the boss so technically you don’t need permission. But saying something like, “Hey all. We’re at time, but I think it’s really important that we finish this now. Can everyone stay five extra minutes?” The team will appreciate your care, and you might just find out that someone is meeting with one of your largest clients right then so they should step away. 

Key #2 - Hammer Your Values and Impact: 

I observe team meetings often where after they’re over, I have no clue as to the following: what the team values are, what they care about, how they should operate, or what the impact they’re intending to have is. 

Leaders, team meetings are the perfect time and place to message these things. Do this through shout-outs specific to team values (a lot of leaders do shout-outs, but they’re often disconnected from the team values). You can even have the team shout each other out specific to your values. Share data, specific to your team goals, around the impact you’re intending to have. Repeatedly send the message about where you are now vs. where you’re headed. Rally the team around this. 

Reinforce how the team should operate in the meeting itself by sharing norms on the front end. No tech, we look for solutions, share succinctly, etc. so the team is totally present and aligned during the meeting. 

Do not make the mistake of thinking that just because your team is highly-skilled or highly paid that they’ll just operate in this way naturally. They won’t. They have too many competing priorities. 

Many teams have their vision and values hanging on the walls and never ever mention them. So people not only don’t embody them, they act in ways that contradict them. This is a huge miss and team meetings are a place to solve for this. 

Key #3 - Share the Agenda and Meeting Objectives: 

Your team should know the purpose of every meeting they’re in with you and what you all are expecting to accomplish. To get there, you must share an agenda with the team on the front end. Electronically or in paper format is best, but this can even be done verbally. 

“We’re going to spend the first ten minutes on shout-outs specific to our team values. Then we’ll spend twenty minutes sharing our data from this past week. After that,...”  

Otherwise, the team can feel untethered, questioning what’s coming next, and not clear on their progress. This is an uncomfortable feeling for anyone (imagine you sat down on an airplane and neither the flight attendants nor the pilot welcomed you. Imagine the plane started moving without any word on flight time, the conditions on the route, or the weather at your final destination. Imagine you just started speeding down the runway, again, without any direction from the people whose care you’re in. That’s how it feels.). 

Share what you intend to accomplish as well. 

“Today, I’d like us to do two things. First, we’re going to problem-solve around our Q2 drop-off. Why did it happen and what can we learn from it going forward? Next,...” 

Make sure the team is clear on the purpose. They’ll be more engaged and the meeting will be more productive. 

Key #4 - Foster Engagement Opportunities: 

Too many meetings feature one person doing most of the talking while the rest of the team watches. When it is time to share out, it usually looks like volunteers (which is okay but not great) or people being called on. When that happens, the tension rises. People don’t love being put on the spot, especially when they haven’t had time to think. Calling on people in this way makes everyone skittish. Some will avoid eye contact as they don’t want to be called out. Some will begin to dread the meetings altogether. 

Instead, whenever you have a question or an ask, have the team write down their responses. Give them a couple of minutes (time this) to brainstorm. Then have them pressure-test their ideas by sharing with a handful of peers before sharing whole-group. 

“Okay, we need to action-plan around increasing our brand awareness. Everyone take two minutes and jot down as many ideas as you have. We’ll then share in groups of three and come back whole-group to see what we came up with.” 

When they do come back whole-group, each team member will have had individual thinking and writing time and then a conversation with two other people. Their ideas will be stronger and they’ll be more confident to share them. 

As a leader, it’s your responsibility to run meetings that matter. When you don’t, the team starts to question why they’re meeting at all. They start to resent meeting times as they have so much other work to do, and your meandering meetings are taking them away from that. 

You may even feel this as well. Which can lead to weeks and even months going by without the team connecting face-to-face. This means you’re missing an incredible opportunity to build and solidify your culture. 

Strive to design and run meetings that elevate your work and inspire the team. Strive to run meetings that the team can't wait to attend. Not meetings they simply tolerate.