Meetings are necessary. But not all meetings are good. To be more precise, not all meetings are run well. But how can you rescue a bad meeting if you’re not the one leading it?

While our workshops focus on creating better leaders, the truth is, that most of us spend the majority of our time as participants. While we’re not suggesting that you, as a participant, instantly take over a bad meeting, there are some actions you can take to improve a bad meeting without stepping on the toes of your meeting leader.

The Do’s and Don’ts—Starting with the DON’TS 

We start with what NOT to do, as it is essential that you have four rules clearly in mind before you take any action:

• NEVER embarrass the leader
• NEVER challenge the leader’s capabilities
• It is NOT your meeting, you are only trying to help
• If the leader resists your efforts, stop

To put it simply: NEVER embarrass the person leading the meeting.

What can you, as a participant, DO to rescue a bad meeting? 

Everyone is Sitting

If all participants, including the leader, are sitting down, take a marker and stand up. Suggest to the leader that you can assist by recording what is happening. Try to summarize what seems to be the purpose and direction (for lack of an agenda) of the meeting. Before rising, you may even draft and then suggest an agenda to help guide the meeting.

Unless you are told to sit down and shut up, you have become the facilitator. By standing up, recording on flip charts, whiteboards, or projector screens, and using facilitation skills to keep the discussion focused, you have effectively changed the course of a bad meeting by using a facilitative leadership style.

The Leader is Standing

If the meeting leader is standing up, start by using facilitator skills, such as asking sharp questions and using reflective active listening, to get the group focused. If the leader is not effective in knowing where to go, your effort to clarify will not be a problem. Once you gain a role as a “focuser”, you may then suggest that your agenda would help everyone make better contributions. Playing “dumb” is very effective in getting people to set directions without feeling threatened by you.

You may suggest to the leader that he or she has so much to contribute, that you would be willing to stand up and do the flip chart recording. Again, once you are standing with a marker in your hand, you subtly become the facilitator. In both cases, talk to the meeting leader after the meeting. In a non-threatening way, explain how the next meeting can be made more effective. You will begin to change the meeting culture in your organization.

Seven Ingredients to Avoid a Bad Meeting

You want to avoid meeting killers. A “killer” would suggest the absence or void of much of the following. There is no set formula for subtly controlling bad meetings, but there are seven ingredients that suggest a strong likelihood of positive impact. Listed in order of importance, the seven ingredients include:

1. Know What Done Looks Like:

Any leader needs to know where they are going before they take off. Make the purpose and deliverable of the meeting clear immediately. People can follow a leader who knows where they are going. However, people are reticent to follow someone who does not know where they are going. And meeting participants ALWAYS know the difference.

2. Recommend an Agenda to Guide the Group:

Structure yields flexibility. If you draft a map for their journey, it is easy to take a detour or scenic route because you know where to go when the temporary path is no longer valuable. Plan your work and work your plan.

3. Suggest Ground Rules to Ensure On-time Performance:

The terms “concussion”, “percussion”, and “discussion” are all related. Avoid meeting headaches and get more done faster. While not required, ground rules help everyone get more done, sooner.

4. Control or Define Terms to Prevent Scope Creep:

Unless your deliverable calls for a definition or scoping boundaries, do not allow arguments about the meaning of terms.  Bring your definition tool to the forefront and get participants level set on what key terms mean to everyone. You need consensus around the meaning of the terms being used, so prevent arguments about definitions by building them immediately, with the group. Scope creep kills projects, and it kills meetings as well.

5. Enjoin and Facilitate Argumentation:

The best return on investment of face-to-face meeting time (and costs) derives from resolving conflict. When two or more people (or teams) disagree, they need a meeting referee — a facilitator. Arguments do not get resolved with text messages, emails, decks of slides, and PDFs. See How to Manage Conflict for refreshing tips.

6. Focus on the Analytics or Tools that Galvanize Consensus:

There is more than one right answer or tool for nearly all circumstances. Given your participants, constraints, and personal experience suggest a tool that may be optimum for the situation. If required, recommend a backup approach, if something immediately goes awry.

7. Increase the Velocity of Participation:

Groups are smarter than the smartest person in the group because groups generate more options than individuals alone. Solicit and encourage a multiplicity of input. The human mind is empowered tremendously when it can compare and contrast options to influence decision-making.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)

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