10 Tips for Efficient Meetings from Successful Leaders

Let’s talk about the ever-dreaded meeting. We all whine, moan and complain (at least to ourselves) when there’s one coming up. But even just getting a meeting scheduled can be a giant pain! Between vacations, employees working from home and unexpected sickness/appointments, getting all the necessary people in one place is far from easy. Trying to actually hold productive meetings can seem nearly impossible. Not to mention the potential distractions when one is actually organized.

In fact, 73% of meeting attendees admitted to doing unrelated work during meetings. Another 39% of professionals (including executives) admitted to actually sleeping in meetings. Apparently, it’s not something that just happens in sitcoms. So what’s the deal? What makes the meeting so unbearable?

Obstacles to a Productive Meeting

It may be a perfect storm of problems. For one, 63% of meetings are conducted without a pre-planned agenda. This leads to confusion about the purpose of the meeting, and many employees will wonder why they need to be involved when there’s other, more important work to do.

For another, many people feel that nothing important is accomplished during meetings: 33.4% of employees think meetings are unproductive time-wasters. There are often too many voices to be heard and too many opinions to make any serious decisions. That’s why one CEO makes use of the “two pizza rule,” which limits the number of meeting attendees to how many people can be reasonably fed by, you guessed it, two pizzas.

The meeting may have a bad reputation, but there’s still hope. You can turn your unproductive time into meetings that employees are excited to attend by listening to the tips from these leaders. You’ll find insights from people like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey and more. Check out the tips below and you’re on your way to a happier meeting:

The Branchers

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