5 Unique Tips for Better Meetings (Episode 44)

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Transcript

There are some unique practices that you can put into place that can help you have better meetings. Now, when I say unique for what most people think of when they think of meetings, these are unique. But for you, some of these may be already in practice.

 But I encourage you to watch this because I bet you there’s some ideas you haven’t seen or put into practice yet.

1. Start your meeting at odd times

The first tip is to start your meetings at odd times. You see, when we say a meeting starts at 11 o’clock, for example, that’s more of a generalist time in our mind.

Yes, 11 o’clock is specific, but often we think of 11-ish. However, if you start at 11:03, that’s very specific and people are more likely to be on time because the time is so specific.

So when it comes to your meetings, consider starting them at odd times. 11:03, 9:34, whatever may be.

When you set a specific time like that, it seems more serious than a general 11 o’clock.

2. Set odd times for the length of the meeting

You can also set odd times for the length of your meetings. Often when we think of meetings, we think of 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 an hour. We think of those increments that a meeting has to have.

However, a meeting doesn’t have to follow 15 minute increments or 30 minute increments. You can have a 23 minute meeting or a 47 minute meeting. Don’t feel like you have to fill some allotted time.

In fact, shortening a meeting from an hour to 53 minutes or a 30 minute meeting to 23 can help you stay more focused on the meeting because you have a more set specific time that you have to have the meeting over by. Something to consider.

3. Hold walking or standing meetings

Third, consider having walking or standing meetings. When you’re standing, when you’re walking, generally the meetings last faster and people think better because they’re just not lounging around the whole time.

When you’re with a small group of people and walking around discussing, your body’s moving, the brain’s functioning a little bit better, and different ideas can come from it. You’re also less likely to waste time chatting because you’re either standing up or walking around.

Consider using these types of meetings where you can.

4. Host a daily huddle

Next is the daily huddle, and these are common in quite a few organizations. Daily huddles are short meetings that teams have every day or every other day for everyone to make sure they’re on track, to see what everybody’s working on, what help people may need, and so on. By having the daily huddles, it can prevent some of those longer meetings because everyone’s in the know of what everyone’s working on, what’s important, who needs help, and so on.

5. Use a parking lot

Fifth is the parking lot. Now, in meetings, it can be easy to get off track. Sometimes people have good ideas that probably should be pursued or considered at some point, but sometimes those ideas have nothing to do with what’s being discussed at the time.

So in those cases, you can have a designated parking lot area for those ideas. This could be on the whiteboard, could be a poster, it could be an app, or whatever it may be. When someone talks about an idea or goes off topic on something, you can say, “Hey, let’s put that on the parking lot, and that can be something for another meeting,” or” If there’s time at the end of this meeting,” or whatever it may be.

Those are just a few unique-ish tips that can help you have better meetings.

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