“Let’s get started,” says the team leader. “How’s everyone doing?” Random cough. “Great. So, it’s the weekly meeting. And, um, well…” Awkward silence.
Ever been there?
Your team meeting starts, and no one knows what to talk about. Maybe the subjects are all over the place. By the end of the meeting, you are back to square one. Or worse, you’re more confused than before.
No one likes unproductive meetings—especially as the meeting host. It's frustrating when you know your meetings could add a ton of value, but you feel like they're not living up to their potential. They're wasting time.
Team meetings can be short and effective, and kick-start tangible action items.
Doesn’t that sound much better?
Find out how to improve your team meetings with simple tweaks and the right team communication tools. Once you do, you can increase productivity and drive business growth.
The decline of team meeting value
Successful team meetings align everyone toward a common goal. But traditional meetings are difficult, and distributed teams with busy schedules have only complicated the process.
The old days of getting everyone together in one room simultaneously are over. Modern companies often work with distributed teams across time zones and on tight schedules. This can make meetings more meandering or less urgent. But there's a way to ensure that your meetings are productive.
Sometimes team tools or processes can get clunky. Using tools that don’t talk to each other or dealing with apps that have a high learning curve can slow things down.
It’s also challenging to get everyone together at the same time. If you’re lucky enough to round up everyone at once, you must then stay on topic and make measurable progress to make the most of everyone’s time.
Despite these challenges, it’s clear that the workspace continues to shift to hybrid, distributed, and remote meetings. The advantages of virtual settings help eliminate many roadblocks, including balancing time zones and communication styles.
Here’s the good news: You don’t have to settle for unproductive meetings. There’s a better way to structure your meeting. It starts by knowing what works and what doesn’t.
Whether your teams meet in person, virtually, or both, you can assess the health of your meeting structure and start from where your teams are now.
Understanding when team meetings work and when they don’t
When team meetings work, everything runs smoothly. Your team collaborates, you have great ideas to work with, and you can be productive.
When they’re not working, that’s another story. It's like getting into your car, starting the engine, and feeling the vehicle violently shake. You might not know why, but you know something’s not right. You can feel everyone's focus shifting away from the main objective. Or, worse, you can sense people planting the seeds for the dreaded 'meeting after the meeting'—the unofficial sync.
You don't have to be in the dark about the purpose of team meetings.
Red flags for team meetings
“Why wasn’t this an email instead?” Think back to a meeting that felt redundant or straightforward—it could’ve been avoided altogether. All that would have been required was a quick email with a question.
“Um, what are we talking about?” Meetings aren’t productive without a decision and assigned action steps.
“Anybody else want to say something?” Low employee engagement is a big red flag that signals a lack of interest in meetings or a lack of preparedness. It can stem from the current team culture, poor communication practices, or past experiences with unproductive live meetings.
“Great meeting! What’s the plan again?” Meeting for the sake of meeting is usually not the most productive way to accomplish things. That’s especially evident when a meeting ends without tangible progress or next steps.
Instead, team meetings should provide a streamlined, collaborative experience.
Green flags for team meetings
The following are ways to help ensure a good team meeting:
Align your team: Communicate focused ideas and reach a unified vision to get your team on the same page regarding projects and growth strategy.
Create a brain trust for innovation: Every team member should have the chance to brainstorm and share their thoughts, big or small. Each person should feel comfortable. By creating a positive and inclusive environment, you increase the chances for creativity and surfacing unique solutions.
Pave the way for transparency and collaboration: Your team works best when working together and communicating with a tight feedback loop. Effective meetings let you dive into projects together and make adjustments based on constructive communication.
Build and nurture team relationships: The work environment doesn’t matter. You could be in a live setting, working in a remote team, or part of a distributed team. Either way, it's easy to feel disconnected or lonely in the middle of so much work and so many tasks. Focused meetings with clear team-building objectives help strengthen teams and relationships to increase morale and productivity.
Clarify goals and provide clear action steps: What’s a meeting if nothing happens afterward? Productive meetings should have an obvious meeting goal before the meeting starts and then assign action steps when it’s over.
Once you evolve your approach to team meetings for better results, you can explore how to increase the value you get from each meeting.
6 ways to get the most out of your team meetings
Every team experiences meetings, but only a few teams experience productive meetings. You can be part of the second group when you use these foundational tactics for better staff meetings.
1. Establish the meeting goal and an agenda
When teams jump into a meeting with no agenda, attendees don’t have the time or clarity to prepare, and meeting leaders don’t have the opportunity to set the tone and focus. That’s a recipe for confusion and frustration for everyone.
Clearly state your goals and write down the order of the meeting using a team meeting agenda. Distributing this information beforehand lets everyone know what to expect and how to prepare for that meeting.
A great way to automate this process is by using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. HubSpot with Slack integrations or a productivity tool can automatically form agenda items and goals and send them to the relevant meeting participants. Your team members can come well-prepared thanks to the goals and expectations sent directly to their Slack channel beforehand.
2. Provide context and resources before the meeting
Similar to stating goals, adding context and helpful resources before the meeting can benefit everyone.
Your entire team can prepare with the best resources and information available. Then they feel comfortable during the meeting and can provide valuable input. This will also save time during meetings since teams can jump straight to decision-making.
One of the best tools to add context to meetings is Loom. Creating a video with Loom is fast and easy. You can hit record on your Chrome browser extension, desktop app, or mobile app and record in seconds.
When you record your screen and webcam, you can clearly communicate your ideas and add context so everyone’s on the same page before the meeting.
3. Invite only relevant people
Having too many people in a meeting can be as challenging as having vague goals. Not everyone can express their ideas fully, and the meeting runs long. There are too many variables involved.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos implemented a practice at Amazon that focused on fewer people in meetings. If you like pizza, you’ll like the two-pizza rule.
According to Bezos, if you can feed everyone in the room with two pizzas, you can run a good meeting. If not, you may have too many voices in the room. The two-pizza rule ensures that only the most relevant attendees are present.
Not all of your meetings need to have the same limit. Still, it’s a reminder to choose attendees wisely to keep the conversation focused, relevant, and action-oriented, with clear assignments and roles.
4. Leaders: Speak last
Jeff Bezos often states his philosophy on meetings and how he lets everyone speak first. Leadership author Simon Sinek also covers the idea in his book Leaders Eat Last.
Sinek points to the style of leadership on his YouTube channel:
“Well-intentioned leaders…sit at the head of the table…we say to the team, OK, here’s the problem we have. This is what I think we should do, but I want to know what you think. [But at that point, it’s] too late. You bias the room…”
Sinek then paints the picture of what it looks like when leaders speak last:
“[Instead], sitting down and saying ‘Here’s the problem. I want to know what you think,’...not giving away if you agree or disagree…Two things happen…You actually get the benefit of more input…and other people feel like they can contribute.”
By letting others speak freely first, you get an authentic and transparent flow of ideas—unhindered by your influence. This leadership method increases morale and a sense of ownership. It helps you generate unique ideas to make the most informed decisions.
5. Communicate a strict time limit
If meetings run long, they can become tiring for team members and deter future meeting success. Long meetings also risk participants walking away with unclear or confusing expectations. Not everyone will retain every point, and action steps can slip through the cracks.
Instead, you can provide clear guidelines on meeting lengths. With tools like Zoom or an alternative, you can also set time limits.
Another great way to shorten meeting minutes is by using asynchronous video messaging. Before a meeting, you can send prep videos to cover the foundational information. When everyone comes prepared and focused, you can chop off a significant portion of the warm-up and icebreaker phase in meetings.
6. Provide a recap and clarification
All meetings should be decision-based. Goals and action steps play a central role, but so do recaps and follow-ups. A summary with meeting notes helps realign your whole team and minimizes confusion around what to do next.
The best way to provide recaps is through a quick Loom video. You can summarize what happened in the meeting, reiterate goals, and clearly connect them with steps to move forward. Your Loom video can also include a call to action (CTA) with relevant resources or next meeting steps, and viewers can comment or send video replies if they have questions.
These steps help you maximize the value of your team meetings.
But what if someone told you that you could cut most of those meetings out in the first place?
What if you retained only the core meetings that delivered the best results and saved time?
Fostering better workplace communication outside of team meetings
Think of the Pareto Principle: 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. In other words, a small portion of your activity is the cause of most of your results.
If you can identify the high-performing aspects of your time, you can cut out the rest and increase productivity.
It’s the same for meetings.
Look at the last 20 meetings in your calendar. Only a few likely produced most of your progress. What if you could replace the other 80% with quick video messaging?
Instead of returning to the red flag of “Shouldn’t this be an email?” team members can press record and capture their screen and webcam. They can create a message in seconds and provide an engaging and immersive video.
Asynchronous videos cut unnecessary live meetings and video conferencing and provide focused, frequent touchpoints between team members. These clear and effective messages help improve workflows and increase productivity without increasing meeting time.
While you can improve team meetings in general, async virtual communications help maximize your meetings. Async communication aligns teams at a higher level by saving time, adding context, and helping team members focus based on action-oriented communication.
Choosing an asynchronous team meeting solution
Loom’s async video messaging gives you control of your time. You can record, present your ideas, and share them with colleagues in just a few minutes.
Loom’s AI add-on also removes filler words and automatically generates video titles, summaries, and invite messages. You can streamline your overall workflow to communicate more in less time.
You can use Loom to eliminate most live meetings, align your teams, and lead and collaborate on successful projects.
Record your first Loom video today to ramp up your productivity with dynamic and engaging messaging.