I hate meetings. I hate them with a passion. Former colleagues have even had jokes about me and my great dislike for meetings. Statistics tell us that in the United States there are 11 million meetings taking place each day! Of those, one-third of them fail. That equates to about $37 billion wasted annually! That’s an enormous amount of money wasted each year!

Why Meetings Fail

I recognize that great collaboration can occur at meetings, but often it doesn’t. Usually, there are many reasons why meetings fail to meet their objectives:

• There is a lot of conversation but no actual agreements
• One person dominates the conversation
• Your voice is not recognized or heard
• People come unprepared
• The leader does not keep people on track
• The meeting goes off on tangents
• It feels like a waste of your time
• It runs long or does not start on time
• All that is communicated is information which could have just as easily been written in an email

You may identify with some or all of these and as a result, you may also dislike meetings.

Tim and I recently lead a day staff retreat for Exceptional Parents Unlimited. They do amazing work with children 0-5 who have been diagnosed with a disability and offer services for them and their families. When I was leading them in how to create an excellent meeting, I went over the list above as to why meetings fail and asked them to stand up if, at some point in their life, they had experienced these things at a meeting. Before I got to the end of the list the whole room of 110 employees were standing.

Why it Matters

Think about a group of friends where these types of behaviors continuously happened. Probably wouldn’t want to keep those friends because they obviously don’t care about you or what you have to contribute to the relationship. Similarly, people who attend meetings that do not stay on the proposed agenda, whose voice is not valued, and where agreements are never reached do not feel like a valued member of the group. As a result, those items listed above break trust. What is proposed and what you are supposedly invited to are what people are expecting, then when what actually what ends up happening does not meet expectations, trust is broken.

3 Steps to a Great Meeting

A recent book, No Fail Meetings, Michael Hyatt gives some practical steps as to how to create successful meetings:

1. Prepare well: Make sure you have allotted appropriate time for each item on the agenda. Make sure you are mindful of who actually needs to be at a meeting and make sure you give adequate time ahead for each person to prepare what you have requested of them.
2. Stay on point: Stick to the agenda, start and end on time, allow for opposing views and use conflict transformation to obtain a better outcome, end with assigning action items that are the agreed upon during the meeting.
3. Follow-up: Hold each person accountable for the tasks they agreed to do (including yourself).

I have been using a form of this in all meetings I run. It is my goal for people to look forward to meetings I invite them to. People should be able to speak into decisions, to take ownership of the outcome, to want to volunteer for items to be completed and to be confident that what they are being invited to is actually what is going to be accomplished. I have led many different types of groups, from being an Executive Director to the President of a professional board to the leader of various church ministries, and our meetings all used these steps and have been successful. As a result, I’ve even had people compliment me on how well the meetings are conducted and how much work we actually accomplish! So this really works.

Transform Conflict in a Meeting

One skill mentioned by Hyatt is conflict transformation. He says, “This approach sees conflict as an opportunity to strengthen the life of any group. So, when conflict inevitably arises in your meeting, don’t immediately feel pressured to shut it down…Use it as an opportunity to bring the opposing parties together by examining the real issues…and guiding them toward a solution that is win-win.” Similarly, we at Nightingale Resolutions put this approach into practice and teach others how to use. It is a skill that takes time to learn. It is through implementation that your skill becomes refined and experience growth.

Nightingale Resolution offers training and consultation to teach skills on creating excellent meetings as well as conflict transformation. These skills are excellent for all leaders and employees including business and church. If you would like to know more about our services you can contact us for a complimentary initial meeting.

Noelle Nightingale, M.A., is the President of Nightingale Resolutions as well as a consultant, mediator, trainer, and facilitator. She has over 13 years experience in the field of Conflict Resolution and is located in Fresno, CA.