Attitude

One of the most common complaints about meetings is that they consistently run over and delay people getting to their next meeting or activity. That is an obvious cost, but the hidden costs are more impactful.

If you establish a pattern of not ending your meetings on time, you and the organization will pay a price. First of all, people expect that whoever calls a meeting will respect their time and talent by designing and leading that meeting effectively. They will leave frustrated when you do not, and your reputation as a competent manager will be diminished.

Second, if people begin to anticipate that a meeting will not end on time, they will pull back. They’ll stop asking questions for clarity. They’ll stop offering differing perspectives or approaches. They will begin to lessen their attention and engagement. Eventually they will simply disconnect and wait for the meeting to be over.

Third, people want to be engaged and aligned with the organization, but if they become frustrated with how meetings are prepared and led, they will pull back their comments, questions, and support.

4 Tips for consistently ending on time

Tip 1: Schedule fewer agenda items. Keep the number of items on the agenda as small as possible. There will be less pressure to rush through the agenda if you have fewer items, and participants will be able to focus on each conversation if there are not ten topics to divide their attention. A good guideline is two meaningful topics per hour. You must have enough time to discuss the topic, reach alignment, and agree on next steps. The criteria remain the same regardless of the meeting topic: Are you doing complete work on each topic? Does each conversation lead to clarity and alignment about what happens next?

Tip 2: Keep group size to eight or fewer. Who should be part of the conversation in order to accomplish the outcomes defined in the agenda? Whose presence is necessary for the topics to be discussed and handled? Who must be there to get the work done? Who, if they can’t attend, means you might as well reschedule? Five to eight is the best size for most working groups—small enough to sit in intimate physical proximity, easy to get everyone’s views considered, enough differing views and experience to ensure a robust discussion, and small enough to assure a candid and authentic conversation. One caveat: less is more.

Tip 3: Keep the conversation on track. The main reason for meetings running over time is that conversations are allowed to drift off track. There are four reasons conversations go off track: lack of clarity about the process to be followed in working through the conversation (process steps); people with a pattern of talking too long or too often and neglect to make sure their comments add value; problem solving when that’s not the purpose of the discussion; no one is willing to bring the group back on task once the conversation has strayed. Ideally this is the responsibility of the meeting leader, but any participant will be doing everyone a favor by pointing out that the focus has shifted.

Tip 4: Make ending on time one of the meeting outcomes. If you establish a new pattern of designing and leading well-run meetings that add value, move projects forward, and respect people’s time, you will also add another layer of credibility to your leadership of the group. You want people to look forward to being in your meeting, and they want your meeting to be one that enhances their workday.

Start on time, stay on track, end early.

“The best things arrive on time.”

—Dorothy Gilman, American writer

For more on ways to transform meetings, check out Make Meetings Matter>>

Want to be really good? It takes patience, persistence, and practice!

“Game within the game” is an expression that comes from sports. Athletes are committed to improving as they play. This is different from practicing before a game. This is about choosing to focus on one aspect of their performance as they play their game.

You have probably used the same principle with your kids in soccer. In each game, you or their coach give them something to work on during the game:

-getting back faster on defense

-passing the ball quicker after receiving it

-maintaining the proper distance from team mates

The key to improving performance in any sphere is choosing a critical variable to work on, then working on it for two weeks until it becomes natural, intuitive, and available to you at all times.

Don’t practice until you get it right. Practice until you can’t get it wrong.

In sports, you can practice between games. But in most areas of life—meetings, parenting, relationships, conversations—we aren’t given time to practice. We are just expected to go out there and be good every day.

Still, getting better at something takes deliberate practice. It requires choosing something to focus on and then working on that behavior until it becomes instinctive. Two weeks is a workable time frame. If you remind yourself as you begin each day, then reflect back on how you did at the end of the day, you’ll quickly create a new awareness.

Here are ten ideas you can practice to improve your meetings. Most of these ideas have broad application in life. Work on each for two weeks and you’ll begin to notice the idea as either present or missing; and with this awareness you’ll have a choice to change your normal response.

1. Look for who is not yet participating in the conversation. Who is on the outside?
2. Who interrupts whom? What happens to the interrupted person and the conversation that is interrupted?
3. Note each time the conversation changes. Do not change a conversation without permission.
4. Note every time someone promises to do something and no deadline is expressed.
5. Look for the four key elements of effective conversation: clarity, candor, commitment and completion (clarity: clear, shared understanding of what was said; candor: being self-expressed; commitment: do X by Y; completion: we are not going to leave this topic until we are all ready to leave it).
6. Set aside technology and be fully present. Notice when others are focused on their screens and their attention would make a difference.
7. Practice focused speaking: Be clear, concise, and relevant.
8. Each time humor is used in a conversation, ask yourself whether it added value to the conversation. Watch out for teasing and sarcasm.
9. Watch your speaking: if you’re usually too fast, slow down; if you’re usually rambling, work on being more concise; if you’re too quiet, work on speaking up.
10. Whenever you notice yourself wondering what someone means, ask for clarity. Stop guessing at what people mean.

Paul Axtell, author of Make Meetings Matter

For more on ways to transform meetings, check out Make Meetings Matter>>

Last year, I was given an opportunity to review the data from research on meetings conducted by an online scheduling platform, Doodle. The report offered compelling data, and I’ll share (with permission) the findings behind three of the most common complaints about meetings that might lead you to adjust some of your meeting practices.

1. Busy professionals are more concerned about the quality of the meeting attendees than they are the meeting format because they felt that irrelevant attendees slowed progress.

Eight or fewer participants is preferred for meetings. Invite only those people required to accomplish what you have on the agenda. Find other ways to inform and engage people who are not necessary. Of course, people want to be included and often get value out of meetings. The point is to be deliberate about inviting rather than just letting your group size swell without being thoughtful about who needs to attend.

Management consultant Margaret Wheatley talks about small groups of people being able to make a big difference, and she uses the question, “What matters and who cares?” to help groups define their purpose. If you limit your meetings to discussions about what matters, your meetings will have more impact. If you invite only those most concerned, the conversations will be focused and productive. And you will also protect people’s time—making sure the investment value is high for those attending and giving those not needed in the meeting more time for individual work.

-taking phone calls or texts

-people who interrupt others

-people who don’t listen to others

-arriving late or leaving early

-people who talk about nothing for long periods of time

You have two primary ways of managing behavior. First, ensure that the top people and most respected members of the group role model the behavior you want. Identify these people, take them to coffee, and ask for their support in improving the experience of the meeting for everyone.

Second, spend a few minutes up front asking the group to be attentive and supportive of everyone who speaks.

Some meetings will benefit from establishing guidelines about technology, interrupting, and side conversations—anything that detracts from the meeting’s efficiency. Don’t have a long list of guidelines, just three or four that the group agrees would help.

You might use the graphic from Doodle below as an opening for your group to express what they would like to be true about meetings that isn’t true now.

The Doodle Meeting Report 2019, created by online scheduling platform Doodle through research with 6,026 professionals in the UK, Germany, and the USA.

3. Poor reception on conference calls and video meetings.

This third point in the report is concerning because the vast majority of respondents experienced poor connections. When people are attending virtually, that leads to multitasking and half-hearted participation—never a plus if you want engagement and alignment. The experience of folks who are not in the immediate meeting room is often far less than for those in the room. Ask your people what support they need in getting the technology required to participate effectively.

With the globalization of business, virtual meetings are becoming the norm for many conversations. Video conferencing technology has made it possible for virtual meetings to include many elements of face-to-face meetings, but not if the technology isn’t functioning for everyone.

-Paul Axtell, author of Make Meetings Matter

For more on ways to transform meetings, check out Make Meetings Matter>>

Molly Fletcher, the author of The Energy Clock, started her career answering phones in the SuperBowl office and went on to become “the female Jerry Maguire” (CNN). Check out this video from Fletcher, who discusses how top-performing athletes manage their energy to achieve world-class performance and how you can apply that to your own energy and goals.

Learn more about sustaining your energy with The Energy Clock>>

The most common complaint I hear about money is “I don’t live an extravagant lifestyle. I don’t go on shopping sprees or luxurious vacations. Where is my money going!? There’s never any money left over to save.”

Most of us didn’t learn about personal finance in school, and that puts us at a major disadvantage. Even after we learn what we should do and want to be doing with our money, we often don’t do it. It’s much more tied to our emotions and habits than we give it credit for - just like with food.

The math around food and money is similar and actually quite simple. Dollars in minus dollars out equal saving, losing money, or staying the same. Calories in minus calories out equals weight loss, weight gain, or staying the same.

If it were actually that simple, there wouldn’t be a billion dollar dieting industry - and we’d be a lot less stressed about money!

One of the reasons it’s difficult to save is that we think about saving money all wrong. Most of us earn money, use that money to pay our bills and live our lives, and then wait to see what’s leftover at the end of the paycheck or month. The bad news is, there’s usually no money left over to save.

We think the answer is to earn more money. I’ve thought this many times. Then I got a raise and expected there to be money left to save but there wasn’t. The irony is that I couldn’t point to big meaningful changes in my lifestyle, but the money just got taken up with more of the same.

One of the reasons this happens is Parkinson's Law. It’s the idea that things take up as much space we give them. It’s why our junk drawer always fills up, meetings take exactly as long as is allotted in the calendar (even if there is only one agenda item!), and you guessed it - our expenses always fill what’s in our bank account.

Most of us will have to make some shifts in order to start meaningfully saving. The good news is that they aren’t hard, it just takes thinking about saving in a different way and setting up a system.

Here are three tips to finally start saving that no one tells us.

1. Get it out of sight, out of mind.
The first thing you want to do is create a separate space for our savings. You want it out of sight and out of mind. When we have a checking account linked to our savings account within the same bank, it’s all too easy to transfer the money over on a whim.

We also can’t help but notice it when we login to check our checking account balance. The money is available and for most of us, and that means it won’t stay in savings for long. There are a few unicorns who are able to keep their savings in the same bank connected with their checking, but for most of us, it just doesn't work.

I’m a big fan of online savings accounts for this reason. The money is available to us (transfers typically take 2-5 days) but it’s not top of mind. They also earn a much better interest rate than our accounts with brick and mortar banks. This means our savings will be growing! And they’re free.

So the first thing you can do to finally start saving is to open an online savings account.

2. Set it up to be automatic.
The next important piece of this is that you want to pay yourself first. What doesn’t work about how we typically save is that we pay everyone else first. We pay our bills, pay for our food and other lifestyle expenses, and even get other people gifts. By the time we’re ready to pay ourselves, there’s nothing left.

You can shift this paradigm by paying yourself first. You do this by setting up an automatic transfer to your online savings account each week, month, or paycheck. When something transfers out of your account automatically, you’re treating it like any other recurring expense or bill. You’re treating it like a top priority expense, which it should be!

We work for the money we earn, we deserve to get paid! It’s ironic that we always pay ourselves last.

3. Don’t be afraid to start small.
It’s really exciting and empowering to decide to pay ourselves first but next we have to figure out how. When we’re paying ourselves last, most of us aren’t saving. We’re living paycheck to paycheck or even if we’re not, we’re not putting aside money into savings.

Deciding to pay yourself first is like taking on another bill. It’s as if your taxes went up or you added a recurring subscription to your expenses. Those things tend to figure themselves out or you adjust for them in your spending elsewhere.

If you’re unsure of whether or not you’ll be able to save anything, don’t be afraid to start small. Set up an automatic transfer for five dollars per week or per paycheck. Then set a reminder to check in with the account after a few cycles. If you didn’t miss it, you can up the ante and increase your automatic transfer.

One of the most exciting parts of this process, no matter how small the amount, is the mindset shift that you are a saver. Once you have this transfer set up, you are someone who saves.

Sometimes we don’t start saving because we think the contributions we can make are too small to make a difference. But our progress isn’t linear. Small steps build momentum and exponential results. Don’t be afraid to start small and build from there.

In Conclusion.
How we traditionally try to save money isn’t working for the majority of us. We want to shift the paradigm and start paying ourselves first. You can do this by creating a space outside of your checking accounts in an online savings account, and setting up an automatic transfer each week, month, or paycheck. As this is a new habit and way of thinking for many of us, you'll want to start with something that feels very manageable and build from there.

For more, here’s a free guide on how to save $1,000 this month.

-Ashley Feinstein Gerstley