A “checklist” changed my meetings (for the #better)

Teaching high school for 5 years in the 1990’s taught me ONE thing: ALWAYS have a purpose. Maybe it’s why I roll my eyes when another author/speaker/guru gains all kinds of attention when they admonish us that we should “start with why.”

CLICK HERE to download a PDF to fill out before our next meeting

You see, I taught 3-4 lessons a day, every day, for 5 years. Before I created the “activities” of the lesson plan, I answered this question:

“At the end of this class less, students will have achieved…”

Look, if you’re a leader in a large company, if you own a small business, or if you are a volunteer in a non-profit organization, you attend meetings. For the sake of an argument, let’s say that a “meeting” is a “lesson,” ok?

Now, here’s the truth…According to a survey by Atlassian, most C-level executives spend almost 20 hours a week in meetings.

Imagine if ½ of EVERY day was spent sitting in a room, or on the phone, or across from someone via video, talking about what you need to be doing (but, not doing a lot of it). According to that study, more than 40% of attendees claim that meetings are most significant time waster of their day.

But, don’t just go by the research. Instead, start a tracking exercise. For the next 5 days, keep track of the number of minutes you spend in meetings (on the phone, via video, or in a conference room). Next to each number (of minutes) give the meeting a binary score:

+ = that was a productive meeting

- = that was NOT a productive meeting

No “kinda,” no “some of it.” You want straight-up YES or NO.

At the end of a week (or, 20 meetings, whichever happens first) give me a call and we’ll debrief your meetings for 15 minutes. (Yes, we’re going to have a meeting…about meetings.)

Now, if you’re too busy to call, but you do the tracking, let me share with you one of the most POWERFUL meeting tools I’ve ever created. You see, every month we meet with dozens of Get Momentum members from around the world. Now, if you’ve ever scheduled multiple 1:1 meetings in one week, you know how stressful that can be. Well, we took the stress out of it by asking each person to fill out an Agenda prior to us meeting.

Click here to see a sample agenda that I’ve used for more than 2 years…