We all know that the most common reactions of the people when it comes to having an online meeting are thoughts like “this is so boring”, “we are wasting our time” or “I’m having more important work to do right now”. Let’s be honest, all of us are having such thoughts sometimes.

I bet you can find tons of articles, about how best to lead your meeting. Statements like “you need to have an agenda”, “you need to keep it straightforward”, “don’t be late” and all sorts of these. Yet, nothing specific and useful.

If you want a productive meeting, you need more than that.

Let’s separate their types, based on the main goal:

  • Informative meeting – we have one presenter and an audience
  • A meeting aiming for a concrete result – like upcoming release, fixing a bug, brainstorming a resolution
  • Regular meeting for status updates

… and we should manage them in a different way.

Tips for handling a daily meeting:

Keep it dynamic

If your agenda contains something like:

  1. team A shares updates, then
  2. team B, then
  3. team C, etc

If you repeat that constantly, the people are getting bored and no one listens and pays attention until their turn.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you change the order once in a while?

If your project allows it, this will bring some fresh outlook in the meeting and will keep everybody focused, having in mind the element of surprise.

Keep it personal

If you want to be a great facilitator you need to engage with your colleagues’ work. We have all been in conversations such as:

“Peter, do you have any updates?” “- No, everything is fine.”

Instead try something tightly related to your colleague, for example:

  • I know you have been overwhelmed with work last week, do you need any help?

  • You did a fantastic job on the release last week.

  • What about the issue that bothered you yesterday, did you find the root cause?

If you are interested in your team’s work, they won’t be afraid to share with you their thoughts and problems and the work will be easily executed.

Be positive

As simple as that. It is always nice to talk with someone, who is smiling, not hating Mondays and having a passion for what he’s doing.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t have to be a professional or serious, just the opposite.

Be respectful, to be respected and always be positive.

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