Meetings are an essential part of a leader’s day yet so many of us hate them. So many of them could just be an email. Your time is precious, so getting good at meetings right will improve your overall impact and help you keep a more positive mental state.

There’s a lot of meeting advice out there that centers on the agenda. I think agendas are good, but they’ve been elevated to a stature that far exceeds their actual use. I’ve attended plenty of meetings where a dogmatic adherence to the agenda is actually what made them bad meetings.

To make your meetings better, I offer the following five steps:

1. Define the desired outcomes and impacts that should result from the meeting

2. Identify possible participants based on what value they provide and/or what value they receive

3. Size the meeting appropriately - based on who provides and receives value, pare the list to what is needed to meet the desired outcomes

4. Set the duration to reach the objectives, have a plan. and end the meeting when objectives are reached

5. Make sure all attendees are truly present

Getting this right will bring much more clarity to everyone involved and make it easier to actually make your time together truly valuable.

What are you going to change for meetings you've scheduled tomorrow?

How will you encourage others to clean up?

What meetings shouldn't you attend this week?