7 Tips to Keep Your Meetings Short

It’s important to cut down on distractions and stay on point during your executive board meetings.

1. Never have a meeting on couches. Count on this rule: The softer the seats, the less effective the meeting will be. Another dependable rule: When elbows are on the table, people get down to business quicker. Always sit around a table. People will stick to business and they’ll be able to handle their papers better.

2. Use the correct table. A round table is best for committee or board meetings. Everyone has equal positional status and equal access to one another.

3. Never do the meeting before the meeting. The best way to destroy morale and initiative is to sew up all major decisions before the people meet. If participants realize they are present to rubber-stamp decisions already made by the leader, they’ll feel useless, insulted and angry.

4. Move the meeting along. The leader should lead with proposals and not open-ended questions.

5. Know Robert’s Rules and use them appropriately. If your association uses a form of parliamentary procedure, follow it. As president, know Robert’s Rules or whatever your association uses. The smaller the group, the less insistent you have to be about strict observance of the rules. But you need to know the rules to be able to set them aside appropriately. The more heated the debate and the stronger the feelings about an issue, the more important it is to stick to the rules, regardless of the size of the decision-making body.

6. Stand for a brief meeting. People get down to business faster and stay more efficient when they stand for the entire meeting.

7. Avoid meetings whenever possible. Embrace the saying, “Most meetings are called to solve problems we would not have if we did not have meetings.” Cutting down on meetings will have the side effect of ensuring that the meetings you do have will be attended by people who aren’t burned out from all the meetings they attend. To say it simpler: People will be more energized and productive at meetings if they haven’t learned to dread them.