We learned about how to address common project meeting challenges.

hello and welcome to our impactful projects and Planning series. I'm Jami Yazdani. In today's session, we'll talk about how to address common project meeting challenges, because projects involve collaboration. Most projects will include some meetings we may be having, Project kickoff meetings, team meetings and working sessions, meetings to gather information or test deliverables or meetings to present final outcomes or reports. Just because project meetings are inevitable doesn't mean they are always effective. Most of us have probably heard jokes or seen memes about meetings that could have been an email. Meetings take time and energy and ineffective and irrelevant. Meetings can negatively impact engagement and morale. Bad meetings can also erode the trust that folks have in you as the project manager. So we may so we want to make sure that we are having successful meetings, but facilitating meetings is not easy, especially when we are trying to balance open communication with getting things done. So how can we rescue our project meetings before we can talk about how to rescue an ineffective meeting. The first strategy to facilitating better meetings is to make sure you actually need to have a meeting in the first place. So is bringing folks together really necessary, or is there another way that you can share or get that same information? So it's important to consider when to have a meeting. Best practice is to have meetings when we need to brainstorm and generate ideas. Meetings are great when we need that energy and spontaneity of group interaction to develop new ideas or solutions or approaches. Meetings also make sense when we need to reach a consensus. So getting folks together can often allow us to have an open discussion, to address concerns, choose a direction, make a decision or reach some sort of compromise. Similarly, we can have meetings when we need to address complex problems, so when we need to discuss multiple factors or there really is no simple answer. Meetings can also be useful to build team cohesion and help foster relationships and improve communication. And finally, one on one, or even small group, meetings may also be necessary when we need to have sensitive conversations. So if we're addressing performance issues, there are times when having a meeting is the best option. So what isn't on this list sharing updates. So sharing updates and info is not a good reason to have a meeting if it doesn't require discussion. This is where we really quickly venture into this could have been an email territory. So there are so many ways to share information that doesn't involve gathering everyone together at the same time. So if it shouldn't be a meeting, don't have one. The more we respect the time of our meeting participants, the better our meetings will go. All right. So even if you have decided that having a meeting is ultimately a good idea, meetings can still go off the rails pretty quickly. So let's talk about some common types of project meeting challenges and what we can do about them. All right. So there's what I call the going nowhere again meeting. And so in this type of meeting, participants ramble on without making decisions or reaching any conclusions. Especially if this happens meeting after meeting, folks are going to leave feeling very frustrated, and the project is not going to move forward. So what is our solution? There are a couple of different ways to handle this, and so creating timed agendas that you share before a meeting can really help. So it is always a good idea to create and share meeting agendas, but adding a time to each item, such as saying from one to 110 can really help keep your meeting on track. When you share that agenda, make sure that any decisions that need to be made are clearly noted in the agenda. So this lets for. Participants know not only the topic that we're going to be talking about, but also the desired outcome of that particular agenda item. If we are trying to get to a consensus or support group decision making, rather than just hoping that having a discussion about what we're trying to decide will generate a decision. We can also use voting techniques. And so there are lots of different ways to support voting in meetings, but there are a few techniques that can help when discussions about a decision just are not going anywhere. So one is creating a pros and cons list collaboratively with the folks in the meeting. You can also have participants rank their choices. So let's say they're choosing between four or five things. We can have people rank those things, which really does allow people to support multiple options. Another voting technique is something called nominal voting, and what this means is that folks name why they are voting the way they're voting. So you might go around the room and have each person share their choice and explain why it's their choice. So all of these techniques move that rambling discussion into a more concrete space where we're sharing and documenting opinions on a decision. So these solutions really are best when planned ahead of the meeting. But what about when you're in the middle of a meeting, you haven't shared an agenda, you haven't said we need to make a decision, but a decision needs to be made. So to rescue your project meeting from that endless ramble clearly name the decision that we need to make and the voting technique you're going to be using. So I might say, Great, we need to make a final decision on X before the end of this meeting. Let's make a pros and cons list. So this kind of reset directs the discussion to the decision making action that we need to take.

Another common meeting challenge is missing stakeholders. So key stakeholders either have stopped attending meetings, or those who do attend are not actively participating. The impact of this, of course, can be delays in the project, miscommunication, even dissatisfaction later on, when the project's final outcomes or deliverables are presented. And so there are a couple of things we can do here. First, consider having fewer, shorter or less frequent meetings. You may simply be meeting too often or for too long to keep people engaged. You may also want to reconsider who is invited to the meeting, so every team member, every key stakeholder may not need to be at every meeting. Invite folks only when it's relevant to them, if folks are coming but are just not engaged, you may want to use a round robin approach in your discussion. So of course, let folks know ahead of time that they're going to be asked to give feedback or input on a particular discussion topic. Again, sharing the agenda with these topics ahead of time can really help and allow folks to kind of get their thoughts together. You can also apply the round robin technique to each agenda item, having different participants lead different discussion items in the moment that we realized we don't have the right folks in the room, or that those who are there aren't really engaged, we can call a reset and clearly state the key outcomes we need from this meeting, or if we need to postpone until the right folks are in the room, we can clearly state those key outcomes we are going to need from the next meeting. So we might say something like, Let's reset for a moment. We need to accomplish these three things, let's tackle them now, or let's reset and tackle these three things at our next meeting, we'll need everyone to participate at that time so the reset really can break the immediate cycle of disengagement and try to move us forward. Another common meeting challenge involves encountering repeated resistance to new ideas or approaches or to the change the project is going to be bringing. When we encounter resistance to change in project meetings, it sometimes shows up as a rehashing of the project scope or purpose, and so the impact of change, resistance and meetings is diminishing, buy in to the project itself, and ultimately, less time moving the project forward. The solution here is to really address the concerns that folks are raising head on. You might say that you hear that there are concerns about the purpose or the goals or outcomes of the project. You want to discuss it now so that we can move forward, then allow those with those concerns to share them openly. You might even want to use a pros and cons list here. It may help to review the written project scope or any justifications for the project with those stakeholders, so they understand that why behind the project if discussing concerns and the scope doesn't end with a willingness to move forward, you may need to meet individually with anyone who still has concerns to prevent the larger meetings from being derailed in the moment. It might also help to document concerns that folks have for further discussion that really gives you time to prepare a response, share the scope or justifications, or to schedule some of those individual meetings. So our goal here is still to address the concerns head on. Another common project meeting issue is more about what happens after the meeting ends. And so the meeting itself may be going really well, but there is a failure to follow up on action items or decisions made during the meeting, so everyone leaves the meeting happy, but nothing is getting done. Obviously, this can cause delays in the project, with tasks not being completed, or they're forgotten entirely. The solution here is to make sure you are documenting action items during the meeting and sharing those action items afterwards. So whether you're taking notes on a shared document or you're adding items to a task list or a project management tool, we want to make sure everyone is clear on next steps during the meeting and that they also have that information after the meeting ends, and so we can add a space to our meeting agendas to document action items or next steps during the meeting you may want to hold the last five minutes to document to do items. So we can use this time to make sure it's clear who's responsible for each of those items and when those action items are due. And then, of course, you can share this list after the meeting. So hopefully these solutions to some common challenges are helpful to you. One commonality that you probably heard across these project rescues is the use of meeting agendas. I'm a big fan of having agendas and sharing them ahead of time, so let's look at an example of a project team meeting agenda that I might use. So at the top of the agenda, we can include a one sentence project scope that can really remind people of shared purpose, so that we're not using meeting time to share updates. We can ask folks to share and document any updates on the agenda before the meeting, and then during the meeting, we can just say, you know, does anyone have any questions? Is there something we need to discuss about these updates? And really allow for a few minutes for that, our primary agenda items would be used for discussions of topics requiring collaboration, such as brainstorming, problem solving, decision making, and then we end that meeting with that brief review of any decisions made, conclusions reach, next steps to be taken. This is also a good time to remind team members of upcoming due dates, and so a simple agenda that focuses on topics needing discussion and collaboration can make our project team meetings more productive. So you may be interested in my problem solving meeting agendas Guide. For each meeting agenda, you'll get a template that can be modified to meet your specific topics and needs, along with guidance on how to use that agenda before, during and after your meeting. This free download is available at YazdaniConsulting.com/resources. If you need support leading projects and teams, visit our project solutions page at YazdaniConsulting.com/projects to learn about how I can help. Great. So I'm happy to take any questions that you have about project meetings. Feel free to add them in the comments. I'll give folks a moment to add their questions. If I'm not able to answer your question live, I'm happy to respond later in the comments. You can also find all of the ways to contact me at YazdaniConsulting.com, contact please, reach out to me if you'd like to talk about project teams and meetings. Okay, a question is, I struggle with even getting meetings on the calendar. Any advice? So this is a challenge, particularly these days, when folks are so busy, but my best advice from a project management perspective is to make sure that any key meetings you're going to be having, any regular team meetings, are on the calendar as soon as possible, even if those meetings are months even a year from now. So early scheduling allows. Allows everyone to plan ahead, avoiding kind of those last minute scrambles to find times to meet. If your project team is meeting, let's say every two weeks or once a month, try to pick a day and time like Tuesdays at 1pm and schedule those out for the life of the project. You can always move a single meeting around if there are too many conflicts. I would also suggest thinking really carefully about which stakeholders should attend a meeting based on their project role. So before sending an invite, think about, you know, who absolutely needs to be at this meeting to collaborate, to make a decision. Every attendee should always have a really clear purpose for why they're in a meeting, it may be easier to schedule meetings with fewer attendees. Wonderful. So feel free to comment or reach out with any additional questions, and thank you for participating in our impactful projects and Planning series. Visit YazdaniConsulting.com/IPP to find out about upcoming sessions and to view recordings of all of the sessions in the series. Thank you.