Franziska: Hi and welcome back. Today I would like to share with you why some meetings suck. I just got off the phone with the author of this book Cameron Herold. He‘s a fantastic consultant. What we spoke about is this book and also some of the strategies in here. So really, I remember back in the days when I was working in advertising, a lot of my time was just sucked up in meetings that really didn‘t need to take so much time. So when I so this book, I got so excited to learn more about what are some strategies that we can even use here in our businesses and that I can share with you that will make a difference. I have 5 things that I want to share with you that I think sometimes we might not apply but could really make sure that the meetings don‘t suck. Meetings are important in any company. We always have meetings to either brainstorm ideas, to discuss something to come to conclusions. So this is quite important.

Now the first tip that I would like to share with you is that it‘s quite important to start the meetings on time. Also the second thing to start on time and if also possible, finish early because most meetings are probably longer than they need to be. So make sure you start on time and make it part of your culture and also finish early if possible. Now the start of the meeting, when you open a meeting the first thing you can talk about quickly is the purpose. So what‘s the purpose of this meeting and then what‘s the outcome? What do we want from this meeting? And at the end of the meeting, to close the meeting, you talk about who does what by when? So who does what by when? So first point, start on time, finish early.

Second point, only have the people in your meetings that really need to be there. Sometimes we have people in meetings that don‘t really necessarily to be there. So make sure you select the right people to come into the meetings.

Now the third strategy I want to share with you is there are really three roles that every meeting has to have. So be very clear on who has which role in a meeting. Now these three roles can also be owned by the one person. The three roles are someone has to be a moderator, running the meeting, someone has to be the timekeeper. So making sure we keep time, we don‘t go off track and someone has to be the parking lot person. Parking lot is when you do go off track and you have a topic that maybe needs to be discussed but it doesn‘t fit into this meeting, they‘ll just write it down and then we have another meeting on that another time. So these three roles – moderator, timekeeper and parking lot can be done by the one person or you have 3 different people. I‘m part of an organization called Entrepreneur‘s Organization and this is the strategy that we also use in the meetings that we have to be very effective.

Now the fourth point that I believe is so important and something that I am very particular about now too is setting a clear agenda. This doesn‘t have to take very long, this can just be a two minute job of the moderator or the person asking for the meeting to put together a quick agenda. The point you want in the agenda is what do you want to cover? Secondly, how long is each point going to take roughly. Thirdly, in which order? And fourth you put down the purpose and the desired outcome of the meeting. So it‘s really a brave agenda. You don‘t even need to print it out. What we do now is we use Google calendar and we just have those points in there and we just have those points in there, at the bottom in notes, where it says notes. We just put what‘s in the agenda for this meeting.

And lastly, I love this point in this book, too, is you always have people in your meetings that are a little bit quieter than others. So you have people that are maybe a little bit more extroverted and then you have people that are a little bit more quite, maybe a bit more introvert. Often what happens is with the introverted they are quieter people. Sometimes, it‘s hard for them to speak up because these guys over here are just talking too much. So the point of a moderator, the job, is also to make sure that these guys over here can speak up also because often they have great ideas but they don‘t speak up. So how do you do it? You just make sure that everyone has a go when it‘s a brainstorming session. Once strategy that Cameron has chosen here is that when you have a question for the group, if it‘s a team meeting of your people, you throw out the question and then you give them a few minutes to write down their ideas in a post-it note. Once that‘s done, they‘ve put their ideas onto the paper, some people take a little longer than others, You then go around, you start with the more quiet people to share their ideas and the loudest ones, the extroverts, go last. Again, our roles as leaders is to create other leaders. We can do this by engaging everyone. Not by talking over each other but actually by engaging the people that are a little bit more quiet. We need to facilitate for them to be able to speak up and become leaders in their own right.

That‘s it. If you want to, of course, there‘s more strategies in here that you can read if you want to read it. I think you can get this on Amazon Meetings Suck. I‘ll share some more strategies in the future that we apply in regards to different types of meetings and how we use them here at Basic Bananas. See you next time.