12 tips on how to run an effective meeting

Effective meetings can help organizational leaders make better business decisions, foster collaboration, and drive innovation. However, last-minute or disorganized meetings run without intention can easily waste time.

Harvard Business Review (HBR) highlights the enormous investment companies make in annual meetings. U.S. companies spend $37 billion yearly on unnecessary meetings.

In this guide, we will share 12 top tips on how to run an effective meeting that supports your organization’s success. Additionally, you will learn how to measure a meeting’s impact using meeting feedback surveys and other methods.

Whether a meeting is a quick team catch-up to track progress toward a goal or a strategic brainstorming session, it should follow a few ground rules.

These 12 effective meeting strategies create structured, productive, and collaborative meetings that drive business results.

A well-defined agenda helps participants understand expectations, stay focused during discussions, and manage time efficiently. These bullet points serve as a roadmap to keep the meeting on track and promote productive discussions.

Following a clear agenda helps hosts maintain relevant conversations that benefit a team or organization. People may break into unproductive, minor conversations or long tangents without it.

Being on time and fully engaged is important when leading a team meeting. You must set the tone as a meeting host by actively leading the conversation.

Productivity drops when meeting attendees are disengaged. By leading by example, you encourage attendees to be actively engaged and present during a meeting.

Keep a pulse on your meeting effectiveness so you can improve it over time by asking attendees for feedback. You can do it informally or make a habit of sending post-meeting surveys to get clear, measurable data.

Meetings are more effective when participants feel their opinions are valued. Balanced participation is crucial in hybrid meetings to ensure all team members have equal opportunities to contribute regardless of location.

Use a round-robin technique to allow everyone to speak for an allotted time, ensuring that all voices are heard. Teams can achieve meeting objectives more efficiently when different perspectives are encouraged.

Related: How do you build an inclusive workplace?

It’s easy to slip into placing blame on certain individuals for lackluster business results. However, effective meetings prioritize finding solutions to problems over blaming others.

You can make progress by focusing on moving forward positively as a team. Dwelling on an idea that didn’t work as expected wastes valuable time. 

Effective meetings stay within their allotted time period to maintain focus and engagement. When setting meetings, keep the meeting length appropriate for the agenda, ideally not exceeding 60 minutes.

Unspoken topics, or “undiscussables” as Harvard Business Review calls them, are “too obscured or feel too challenging to surface and discuss.” These topics could cover anything, from the quality of a new product, the tension between teams, to even a disconnect between company values and actions. 

To tackle unspoken topics, address the elephant in the room sensitively but directly.

To cultivate a positive atmosphere, start with your attitude as a leader. Conduct an attitude check before a meeting to ensure you come in with a positive mindset. Check any anger or frustration at the door and enter the meeting with a fresh outlook. 

Hybrid meetings where some team members are joining over video and and some in person can lead to disengagement of those joining virtually. To prevent this, keep side chats to a minimum and actively encourage participation from your remote colleagues.

When conducting a meeting, define key roles, such as leader, facilitator, notetaker, and chat moderator (for virtual meetings).

A successful meeting doesn’t end when the conversation concludes. It’s best practice to send a follow-up email after the meeting summarizing the discussion. The leader should use the notetaker’s documentation to send the follow-up.

Meeting attendees and other stakeholders should receive a summary of the topics discussed, tasks assigned, and next steps. This post-meeting summary helps hold participants accountable for their next steps and action items.

Designate a notetaker to track the meeting’s discussions and follow-up tasks. You can take notes yourself, ask a meeting attendee, or use an AI notetaking assistant.

After the meeting, share the notes and next steps via email to keep your team on track. Highlight important meeting insights to remember when completing the next steps. 

How do you measure meeting impact? The cost of unproductive meetings is astonishingly high. Research shows that eliminating unnecessary meetings could save a company of 100 employees $2.5 million annually.

Some key ways to measure impact:

You can measure meeting effectiveness informally or use quantitative tools to track attendance rates, assigned task completion rates, time spent, and project milestones.

Meetings can be highly effective means of quickly dispersing information, making decisions, and working toward company goals. However, HR leaders must recognize the aspects of an effective meeting.

SurveyMonkey for HR professionals empowers leaders to run better meetings and reach their goals faster. Leaders can optimize meetings with our Meeting Feedback Survey Template and many other survey templates. The SurveyMonkey Zoom Integration helps organizations get more value from virtual meetings. Sign up today to experience the difference SurveyMonkey can make in your organization.