Are your meetings to long? Low energy? Indecisive? Sparsely attended? Antagonistic? Dreaded? If so, there are steps to take to transform your meetings into productive, solution oriented, efficient sessions. Meetings should be a part of work – a strategy to get things done and a way to spur conversation. We include a few tips below to infuse meetings with energy and motivation:

• Don’t try to change everything about the meeting at once.
• Encourage your staff to speak up – without repercussion – if the meeting has no longer become useful.
• Prohibit texting and emailing in the meeting.
• Make sure that if someone brings up an issue, there is discussion and a query of “what do you need” to get this resolved.
• For issues that arise with next steps, make sure it’s very clear who is responsible and what the expected outcome is.
• Don’t email meeting minutes with a list of action steps and no responsible parties.
• Don’t allow staffers to grandstand or ramble.
• Ask staffers to prepare for a meeting as appropriate.
• Unless it’s a regular meeting, be clear on the meeting purpose, suggested outcomes, duration, and preparation. Circulate a draft agenda but be open to additions.
• Clearly start and clearly end the meeting. It’s ok to have a bit of catch up at the beginning, but don’t let it go on for too long. When the meeting is over, end it. Don’t have busy staffers sitting around waiting to be dismissed.
• Although the meeting participants may agree on the desired outcomes, they don’t have to come to consensus on every topic. Allow staffers to own a topic and be responsible for it.
• Celebrate successes – company wide and for individual staffers.
• Rotate responsibility for meeting facilitation.
• Cross-train colleagues through mini-presentations.
• Surprise everyone with a snack or a gift card giveaway.
• Allow time for questions throughout.
• Ask your staffers how they would make the meeting more productive and what they would like to discuss.

Most importantly, be the change you want to see. If you are the leader of the organization, don’t come to your meetings late or miss them altogether. If you are late for a critical reason, let everyone know what it was. (I was just signing the contract with our new client and wanted to announce that great news in this meeting.) Be energetic and optimistic. Ask questions. Be mindful of body language and tone.