If You Don’t Know the Purpose of Your Meeting, You Are Prohibited From Starting

We've gone WAY overboard on meetings over the past year because it's so easy to set up and accept virtual meetings.

So, let's take a breath and rethink what we're doing. First, make sure you even need a meeting, then read on for ways to get the most out of your time:

• Plan in Advance: Take time to identify the purpose, content and results.

• Communicate the Goal: Start the meeting with a clear goal, and ensure the important topics are discussed before the meeting is over. Communicate the meeting process and the time allocated for the meeting.

• Start and End on Time: And why does every meeting have to be an hour? If you have 20 minutes of content, block 30 minutes and end early.

• Take Action: Recap who's doing what at the end of the meeting. Be clear and set deadlines for getting action items done.

Practice these strategies the next time you’re leading a meeting:

1. It’s time to move onto another subject: "We have 20 minutes left and two other items. Let’s conclude this topic to ensure we have time for the remaining items."

2. You need to get other opinions: "You make a very compelling argument. Let's make sure others have a chance to share their views before we agree on this plan of action."

3. Someone goes on a tangent: “Let’s get back to the agenda so we can end on time.”

4. Something needs more investigation: “What you’re saying is important. Let’s schedule time off-line to take a deeper dive and report back to this group.”

5. You need agreement on something: "Before we go, do we all agree on the next steps that we've created?"

6. You are running out of time: "It sounds like our discussion will take longer than the 5 minutes we have left. Given that, let's spend this time generating a list of issues for our next meeting."