I think poor meetings are one of the biggest hindrances and costs to organisations. I’m not saying that meetings aren’t worthwhile, but if you’re having dead and dumb meetings that aren’t producing results, then you’re doing it wrong. What I want to share with you right now is a framework on how you can have dynamic meetings.

A lot of my clients, when I speak with them in my Productivity Programs or Communications Programs, will speak to me about how they are sick and tired of being in dumb, dead and boring meetings. You know them right? You’re in a meeting, sitting there thinking, “Why on earth am I here?” Many of my clients say they experience this….daily.

Here is the solution…

There are two things that make meetings work well:

1. Context — There are three types of meetings: action meetings, tactical meetings, and strategic meetings. You have to make sure that you are putting the right context in the right type of meeting. For example, if you’re running an action meeting, which is like a daily huddle meeting, and you start getting on to strategic topics, that’s when people are going to start turning off and feeling like, “Maybe I shouldn’t be here.” You’re putting the wrong content/discussion in the context of the meeting.

2. Engagement — This is where people are actually sharing what they really think. They’re contributing, getting feedback in the meeting. It’s a two-way conversation. Engagement is important in making the meeting alive, not dead.

If we put these two elements on a spectrum — context and engagement — you can see below that I’ve drawn this quadrant.

If you get your meeting in the right context but there isn’t a high level of engagement, it’s going to be a ‘dead’ meeting because it’s boring. If you get people highly engaged, so they are really talking about the topic, but it’s the wrong context, it’s going to be a ‘distracting’ meeting —it’s going to distract you from what you really should be talking about.

If you can get the right engagement level and the right context, you’ll get a ‘dynamic’ meeting. The opposite of that would be wrong context and low engagement, which is a ‘dumb’ meeting (which many of us have).

To have a dynamic meeting, you need to get the context right and the engagement high.

I really hope you have more dynamic meetings.

I have these conversations with people in organisations all the time. If you’re in an organisation now and you’re thinking you have really bad meetings, feel welcome to contact me. I’d love to have a conversation with you about how you can create dynamic meetings in your organisation and produce outstanding results.