We’ve all been to an ineffective meeting. Sadly, some of us have been to LOTS of ineffective meetings. You know, the ones that start  10 minutes late, there is no agenda, and the facilitator has no clue about how to engage the greatness in everyone in the meeting. As the meeting wraps up, you think, “There’s an hour of my life that I’ll never get back!”

In this episode, Mel and Michelle discuss how to facilitate effective and inclusive meeting inclusive meetings.  

“Your goal should be to treat your leadership capacity—a finite resource—as seriously as your company treats financial capital (an equally finite one).” https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/want-a-better-decision-plan-a-better-meeting#/  We’re going to wait five minutes for everyone to join.

Often among the first words uttered by an online meeting host, this practice dishonors the time of those who joined on time and does nothing to establish a culture of punctuality for meetings. At the same time, there are legitimate reasons why an individual may be late to a Zoom meeting (or an in-person one). To make the most of those inevitable few minutes when you’re waiting for stragglers, one idea is to start with brief tone-setting exercises. I often start by asking everyone to remove one distraction. That may mean moving something off their desk, opening a window in their room, or closing a window on their computer. Another exercise I like is asking everyone to write down their intention or objective for the meeting. This isn’t something that will be shared publicly, but the practice of thinking about one’s objectives before a meeting begins can be grounding. 

Links and Resources

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Lead to Soar is a global online network for businesswomen, a podcast, and we host live-streaming and in person events to help women have a career that soars! The podcast is hosted by Mel Butcher (melbutcher.com) and Michelle Redfern (michelleredfern.com)

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