Here’s one quick thing you can do today that makes every meeting you lead better. One-on-ones, and that weekly meeting most people hate going to. It’ll set you apart from 95% of the people who lead meetings.
Before your next meeting, get out pen and paper and answer three questions:
- Why does this meeting matter?
- What happens if the meeting goes well?
- What happens if the meeting doesn’t go well? (Maybe the most important one.)
Answer them in a way that’s contextualized to the actual meeting. If it’s a one-on-one, make it relevant to how often you have them. Maybe the next thirty minutes matter because you won’t get another one for a month. If it’s a weekly meeting, make it about what’s on the agenda that day. Even a couple of reasons is enough: this is the one hour we get to talk about the work happening around us and make sure we’re debating well and making good decisions. This is where we decide how we’ll spend the rest of the week and which levers we’ll pull.
You can repeat them week to week. Before the next meeting you lead, answer the three questions again.
Then open the meeting with them. “Here’s why this meeting matters. Here’s what I’m hoping we accomplish today and why it’s important. Here’s what’s at stake if we don’t give it our full attention. So let’s take the next hour and give it everything we have.”
If you start your meetings that way, I promise people will love coming to the meetings you lead. They’ll feel like they get to be present, that their time matters, that the topic matters. And you’ll be better at leading meetings than 95% of the people out there who dread them week in and week out.
— Craig