Speaker 1: Nothing is worse than a bad or unproductive meeting, especially on a project. In this video, I'm going to teach you how to run really well, effective and efficient project team meetings. And if you want to be a project ninja, stay to the end of this video because I'm going to share with you how to get your hands on my guide on top 10 common mistakes project managers make. Hi, if you're new here, welcome. My name is Adriana Girdler and you landed on the best practical project management channel out there. Now, I would love if you consider subscribing to this channel as it helps our community grow. Now, if you're interested how to run really well, productive and efficient meetings, let's get to it. Identify the type of meeting you're going to have. This is the first and most important step you can take to run a really effective and productive project team meeting. I see too many times where people don't have any idea really why they're all there. Yeah, they may have some sort of agenda, but it gets off topic really quickly. The purpose helps you tremendously on how to plan, prepare, if you need pre-read, who needs to be there. So really understand why are you calling this meeting? What is the purpose? What are you hoping to get out of it? Now, for projects and definitely within the lifecycle of a project, you have different points in time where you have different purposes. But some generic purposes that just so that you're aware of, one is brainstorming. So that is one meeting I do a lot of when we're trying to get new ideas out there. So we're trying to figure out some cool concepts. Let's brainstorm and have a brainstorming meeting. Others could be approval. We may be at certain points in the project where things have been created, and I need to get the right people in the room so we can approve it. There's a lot of value and quickness to doing that in a meeting versus on email. And don't even get me there on that note. The other one is resolution. Resolutions become really important when you have a problem and you need to fix it quickly. Creating a meeting and getting the right people in the room really helps to understand. So those are a few types of project meetings that you're going to want to look and implement within your lifecycle of the project. But understanding the purpose as to why you're calling it is really critical. Now, how do you run those meetings? Those are the next tips. Let's get to it. So think of running a really effective meeting and think of it in chunks. So this first chunk I want to talk about is prepare and plan. So now that you know your purpose, which is really important, that's half your battle, why am I calling this meeting? Now prepare and plan for it. Depending on what kind of meeting you've decided to call, you may have to have some pre-read. So you're going to have to organize that, or you may need some information from other people, and you need to give them some time for that. Then you have to send it out. You also want to really look at your agenda. So what are you going to have on your agenda? How long is your meeting? Too often I see people try to jam-pack too many things, and there's no way they get through it all. So I always say less is more, and if you have kind of an offshoot item off to the side that if you do have time, you can throw it into your agenda. But I usually try to stick with three to five things max, depending on how much time I have, if I have an hour meeting. And maybe the top three is what I really focus my time on, and if I have time to do the rest, fantastic, or I save it for another meeting, whatever that may be. But really plan and prepare, think it through, have your agenda. Send that agenda out, by the way, at least 24, bare, bare minimum. Okay, please don't even do that, but at least 48 to 72 hours before the meeting. It really helps people understand. And another thing that you can do too is if you don't have the agenda, what I do in my invites is I always put the purpose, because you know that right away, you've already thought, why am I calling this? So I put the purpose of the meeting with a little note, agenda to follow soon. That ensures that people who get the invite, they know why they're being invited, and they'll accept it immediately. Set ground rules. Now, before we get into this tip, I want to remind you to stay to the end of this video, because I have that guide for you, and I want to share with you how you can get your hands on it. Now, let's get to this tip of the ground rules. When you're in the meeting, it becomes really important at the beginning of your meeting, how you set things up. And the ground rules of expectations of behavior is actually one of my things that I love, and I never start a meeting without it, particularly in the beginning of the framework of a project, when people are just getting to know me and understanding my style of project management. Now, what's really cool is I do have a video on ground rules for meetings. So if you go to the YouTube search bar, you can check it out. So why do I do ground rules? It's really simple. I find in meetings, people sometimes try to run away with it consciously or unconsciously. Who knows? It depends on their personal agenda. Sometimes you get into the heart of a topic, and it can kind of go on a little bit longer, and you have some other things you need to talk about, too. And the ground rules becomes an easy way for you to get everything back on track, because not only are you the project manager, you're a meeting facilitator and a timekeeper, and it's your job to kind of juggle all those balls together up in the air to ensure that you have a successful and efficient and productive meeting. So by doing the ground rules, some of those becomes really important to ensure that. So some of those ground rules I usually have is, do I have your permission to time you out? And what I do with that one is if a topic is going on, I just say, hey, little tea, can we put that on our parking lot, and we'll get back to it later so I can get everyone back on track. And again, you can even establish your own ground rules, and maybe even collectively as a group decide what that may be. I definitely repeat my ground rules for the beginning of the meeting, but once people get to know me, I don't have to do those ground rules anymore on a project team, because everyone has already agreed to our ways of working. Encourage participation. On a project team, it's really easy for individuals to kind of be in their own lane. Get the silo mentality going on and just focus on their task. And so when you're talking about something else that's not necessarily pertaining to them and what they're specifically doing, they may zone out. So it becomes really important that you ensure your whole team is there engaged, participating, listening, active listening, not on their phone, not on their computer, which I really hate when the camera's off, because you know they're working on something else if you're doing a virtual meeting. But it's really important, the participation, because when you're doing a project, people need to have an understanding of holistically what's going on, and you may have some individuals who may have some really good ideas who are just maybe not participating because they're not paying attention. So it's your job to help really pull that out. And how can you do that? Well, sometimes when I have meetings and we want to look at something, I will ensure and ask, hey, everyone, can you please put your camera on, because I want to get permission from you or approval on something, and I want to see everybody's in agreement. That's a nice way to do it. I may also have share a spreadsheet that we're working on, put it up on the screen, and I'll make sure, I'll actually ask everyone, sorry, I'll actually ask everyone to hop into the spreadsheet, because I do them on a SharePoint site, so we all have access to it. And then I see everybody's little name in the corner of the cell that they're on, and so I know they're participating, and then I ask some individuals, so can you read the next one, what are we dealing with next? And that's just a nice way, so you're not doing all the work, but you're ensuring participation, because that really ensures engagement, which is just going to confirm that everyone is going to be coming out of there knowing what they have to do. Stay away from status updates as much as you can. So that's my, I guess it's not really a disclaimer, but here's the thing. There are going to be times on a project you need a status update, but when you look at status updates from a productivity and efficiency perspective, they are not productive. They are what we deem, we call it a waste in the system, as my Lean Six Sigma personality comes out right now. But it's a balancing act, because there are times on projects you really need to have a quick status update of what's going on with a team and their activities. It helps with getting that collaboration and participation and everyone sort of really being involved with the project. But on the flip side of it, I've seen too many times where that's all a meeting is. In fact, the purpose is a status update. And I'm like, that is a waste of everybody's time. Do I really want to be sitting around a room listening to a Bob, his status update on something? We have tools and technology for a reason. There's some really good ones out there. So I like to have everyone give me their status update in our project plan. I have a communication section associated with all activities and tasks. I have a way of working with it. So that's what they do. And what's really cool, my slave project management course, little plug, talks all about that and will show you how to do it. So if you want to check that out, you can definitely it's under the link to the courses under this video. But again, I'm digressing because the whole point is you want to make sure you're not doing status updates. People get very frustrated. They stop coming to your meeting or they really stop engaging. And you do not want that. You want to keep every meeting crisp, clear, purposeful. So when you call them, people know, boom, I'm going to be there because we know we're getting something done. That's a sign of a good, productive and efficient meeting. Outline next steps. The last five minutes of all your meetings. And this is really important. Outline what everyone agreed to. I know you may have some meeting notes. You may have some summaries. In fact, you may even record in the meeting if it's virtual, which, by the way, is not my favorite thing to do because no one really watches it anyway, to go back to it. But that all being said, you want to summarize it. You want to go, OK, this is what we agreed to. Martin is doing this. Kelly is doing this. Paul is doing that. By the way, that's a real project. So shout out to you guys because if you're watching this, you know who I'm talking to. But that being said, I'm digressing now, is to wrap it up with next steps. With everyone in the room, it just really solidifies everything. And if you've been doing your due diligence, you've probably been capturing some meeting notes in your OneNote or whatever tool that you use, and you're going to immediately send it out to the team so you have that verbal qualification and check that you did in the meeting, but you also have the written communication afterwards as well. Now that you know how to run a real effective project team meeting, oh, this, you've got to get this. Underneath this video, there's a link just for you. It's my gift to you because I want you to be successful. And you have to understand what those top ten project mistakes are so you can avoid them. Till the next video, I'll see you later. And don't forget, grab this.