How to Run a Great Team Meeting

Most engineering managers receive no training and are not sure what to do. That was me in my first engineering management role. Here's a great template you could use to run your team meetings. Most engineering team meetings are bad. They spent meandering through an endless task list without a real sense of direction, priority, or urgency. People are stressed out and start to tune out. 1. Start the meeting with a celebration! Do a quick recap of any accomplishments or wins the team had recently. Big or small, a win is a win. Engineering teams get way too focused on what's broken, behind schedule, or wrong and forget to congratulate and celebrate the hard work of the humans behind the team. 2. Check in with all the humans Teams are humans and the success of teams depends on the success of the collection of humans. Spent 3 minutes and have everyone share out how they are personally. Are they good? Are they stressed? Do they need to skip this meeting? Do they need help on something unrelated to this team so they can do their best work here? 3. What's the high-level set of goals for the team In five minutes and less than one presentation slide, what are the high-level goals the team is working on now? The point of this meeting is not to go over everyone's specific tasks, but to bring the group together for energy, support, and creative discussion about challenges. Sharing the high-level goals helps everyone see how their task list fits into that and how to prioritize their work and focus. 4. Review the top risks (why the team won't hit the goals) There are probably risks as to why the team won't achieve its goals. They can be technical (We don't know how to do this) or schedule (We don't know if we can do this on time). A big job of the engineering team is to keep a shared list of these risks and constantly prioritize them. Are there new risks that arose since the last meeting? 5. Assign the Next Actions to Solve the Risks The team can't come up with a solution to most risks in a meeting, but they can decide on the next action to take to develop a solution and assign someone to do it. 6. Creative Discussion Are there any big creative discussions the team needs to brainstorm on together? Group meetings are great for this. Keep the brainstorms brief and productive. 7. Questions? Check-in and make sure everyone is clear on what's next for the team. Make intentional space for this or almost always someone will leave a meeting with unclarity on what to do, but they didn't get a chance to ask. 8. Recap and GO! End the meeting and get to work. I hope that helps you if you are a new engineering manager or just someone that needs to revamp the team's meetings. The Agenda: 1. Celebrate wins 2. Check in with all the humans 3. Review the big-picture goals 4. Review the top risks 5. Assign the Next Actions to Solve the Risks 6. Creative Discussion 7. Questions? 8. Recap and GO! #engineering #teams #leadership

Turn meetings from time drains into power plays. From meandering classical piece into high energy rock anthem. We've all been there. Walk into a meeting, eager to contribute. But, unsure of what the discussion will be about. The clock ticks, the conversation meanders, productivity stalls. An hour or more passes and the meeting ends. Leaving everyone with wasted time; unaccomplished goals. Pro-tip on what's overlooked, the cost! There is a cost to everything we do. I have been in meetings that cost an average of: - $200/hour per person - filled with up to 25 people - that equaled $5000 per hour All of which were plagued by meandering conversations This meeting norm is destroying our businesses: • No purpose, no focus • Absence of structure causes inefficiency • No way to measure the meeting's effectiveness • Understanding what all of this costs us So what can be done? Try this one simple thing to turn this around. No agenda, No attendance! Just say no! How can you add value when you don't know why you are there? You cant! You will have to calibrate to understand! This is unproductive and costs time Will result in another meeting Makes the team look bad And unprepared Time is precious. Meetings should be powerhouses of productivity, not pits of wasted potential. Let's flip the script. • Establish clear agenda before all meetings. • Include expectations and overall objectives. • Assign roles, manage time, and prioritize tasks. • Have system for rating effectiveness of meetings.   - Did we have agendas with clear objectives?   - Did every action have an owner;   - a due date and clear scope of work?   - Is the team staying on topic?   - Are we starting and ending on time or sooner? • Rate each meeting.   - Was it a 10/10 gathering or a 2/10 disaster? • Utilize feedback loop for future meetings.    𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀, 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺. We can't get out of them (at least not all). Turn them into opportunities for growth and success. Have a meeting horror story? I know you do. Share below.

Years ago, I had a new team member ask how I became so comfortable speaking in meetings, able to pivot when the conversation went in unexpected directions. The answer: Preparation. My meeting prep routine looks something like this: ✏ What do I need from this meeting/conversation? Goals, objectives (stated/unstated) ✏ What do I know/believe others need from this meeting/conversation? Goals, objectives (stated/unstated) ✏ What questions need to be asked/answered to achieve those objectives? That is, what do we already know & what information is missing. ✏ What concerns might be presented – and how will I respond? Use that EI to identify potential concerns, consider what is at the root of the concerns, and review what I know, what I can share. ✏ What is the most important information or decision to share during the interaction? Be ready to connect each person with the objective and confirm the ‘why’ is clear. ✏ What topics need to be avoided (and how will I respond when that topic comes up)? Prepare next steps to offer and clear, honest rationale. This routine works for me whether I’m leading or attending a meeting, too. Some meetings require more preparation, some less, but these questions are constantly humming in the back of my brain, so the routine has become both quick and efficient. (Also, every meeting should have an agenda with goals & objectives and a clear purpose for attendees. If it doesn’t, ask for one before you agree to attend!) If you have additional tips, I’d love to hear them! #culture #womeninleadership

Is there too much talking and not enough decision-making in your meetings? Try this at your next meeting: 1. Ask people to create recommendations. I always ask people to give me a headline and 3-4 bullet points to explain what it is or how it works. (I recommend 4x6 post it notes) 2. Give folks 90 seconds to explain their recommendation. 3. Put all recommendations on a flip chart and ask people to dot vote for the recommendation that best solves the problem. (Look up how to conduct a dot vote) 4. Present the recommendations in rank order. Narrow your conversation to reviewing the trade-offs of the top two recommendations. 5. Make a choice - When the discussion is winding down, try to summarize by saying, "So the choice we are making is ...?" 6. Write the choice in an email and send it out after the meeting. This is the approach I took with Nebraska Cancer Specialists, and one person commented, "This would have taken us forever to reach a consensus. You managed to do it in three hours." I'd like to thank Danielle Geiger and the team for inviting me to facilitate their annual planning workshop. Outstanding work, team!

It's the most boring topic, but it also inspires some of the strongest opinions. What is it? ➡ Meetings There's either too many, or not enough. They're either a waste of time, or the best and most productive part of your week. They either have too little structure or too much. Here's what has worked for me: ⭐ Try to hold all one on ones on one day each week, and in general, pick one or two days of the week when you block your calendar and do NOT schedule meetings. ⭐ If a meeting is purely information (a readout), make it an email or a Slack update. ⭐ Every meeting should have an agenda, and the person who called the meeting should prep the agenda, and ensure notes are being taken and action items recorded (Hot tip: If you're a G Suite user, I love the "take meeting notes" feature in calendar invitations). ⭐ That being said ^^, the agenda doc should be collaborative and anyone attending the meeting should be expected to review the agenda in advance and add any discussion items they think are missing. ⭐ If it's a recurring meeting, have one document that acts as a rolling meeting agenda, notes doc, and to do list. Having everything in one place makes it easier to track progress week over week/month over month. ⭐ With recurring meetings, start each meeting by reviewing the action items from the previous meeting and specifically discuss anything that wasn't completed so there's a plan of action to ensure it gets done. ⭐ If your team is remote or hybrid, strongly encourage your team to be on camera. It's so much easier to read tone and develop a sense of connection with people when you can see their faces. It also makes it much easier to see if someone is actually paying attention and engaged in the meeting, or if they're multitasking. ⭐ Be clear about whether attendance at meetings is optional or required - and when it's required, insist that people show up and be on time. I've still got a lot of room for improvement when it comes to how I structure meetings and would love to hear what tips you all have for making your meetings great. Share your best tips in the comments 👇 #meetings #kathleenhq

As a Chief of Staff, I'm usually the one running the meeting. A key component to the team's success is to start every meeting with a quick, "You Are Here" moment. Executives are running from meeting to meeting. In a virtual world, few visual queues are available to signal what meeting we're in, who we're meeting with and why we're meeting. A typical "You Are Here" welcome orients the entire team and prepares them for the meeting. For example, the COS might say: "Welcome, team, to our weekly forecast meeting. This week our discussions will focus on the upcoming month as well as the next quarter. We will go through XXX part of the forecast to begin, and then shift to the YYY section. Any questions before we kick off?" Additionally, we might use a PowerPoint slide with the meeting's purpose and agenda. How do you orient your team? What welcome messages have you found to be helpful? #COSMonday #ChiefOfStaff #Leadership #YouAreHere [Graphic is AI-generated, with prompt in the alt text.]