How to Ensure Effective and Efficient Meetings


At the end of our graduate class “Community Development: The Art of Facilitation and Design” with Jeanette Romkema we reflected on how principles and practices of Dialogue Education could also help ensure more effective and efficient meetings. It was eye-opening!

Most of us are involved in or will be involved in way too many meetings. Here are tips to help minimize the number of meetings we go to, maximize the use of time we have in them, and work to make these gatherings important, meaningful, and helpful.

  • Be clear about start and end times, and stick to them
  • Invite people to tend to their personal needs i.e. move around, get a coffee, etc.
  • Plan for solo thinking time
  • Practice active listening
  • Invite questions throughout
  • Name objectives and work to achieve them
  • Develop a realistic agenda and clear goals
  • Determine when it would be helpful to engage everyone to better achieve your goal(s)
  • Ensure all voices are invited in and heard
  • Ensure all content is relevant and important
  • Practice the core principles of respect, safety, inclusion, engagement, and relevance
  • Set guidelines, if necessary and helpful
  • Name who will do what, and by when, for each action item. Make sure this information is recorded in the minutes to ensure accountability
  • Start meeting by checking action items from past meeting(s)
  • Keep numbers to a minimum; ask “Who really needs to be at this meeting?”
  • Allow for “space” in the agenda for items that may take more time than expected
  • Be aware of different learning preferences and multiple intelligences, and make room for them
  • Welcome people as they enter (even if they are late)
  • Select or arrange the venue to enhance the meeting and dialogue (not distract)
  • Share the agenda in advance of the meeting and invite input
  • Ask “Do we really need to have this meeting?” If not, don’t.

What can you add to this list?

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Steve MacDouell, Raymond Lo, Demola Orekoya, Zoe Zhao, Liesl Thomas, Ruth Bartlett, Jelle Koersen, and Mary Gorombey are graduate students at Wycliffe College, of the University of Toronto.

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