One Meeting Minute Thought for Your Week
To lead meetings well, you have to know how to manage disruptions during a meeting.
Because this is the hard truth from the real world of business: things aren’t always going to go like you think they will.
Your plan is going to get messed up.
And you’ll have to adjust.
The good news is you can adapt more easily by having your critical meeting essentials in place.
The meeting essentials to help you manage disruptions
If you want to successfully adapt and adjust when things don’t go as you anticipate during your meetings (and this WILL happen), you need to prepare in advance.
When you have these three meeting essentials in place before you start your meeting, you’ll be ready.
- A Clear Purpose
- The Right People
- A Prepared Agenda
Here’s why.
How a clear Purpose helps you manage disruptions
When a distraction threatens to disrupt your meeting, you’ll know to avoid it.
But, you’ll only be able to protect yourself and the colleagues you’ve invited to your meeting if you know the specific Purpose of your meeting.
Without a clear Purpose, you’ll welcome the distraction as a valid topic.
And before you know it, you and all the other participants in your meeting will have wasted precious time.
Time you can never get back.
When you’re leader of a meeting, the people who attend entrust you with their most precious resource – their time.
Being the leader of a meeting is an important position with great power and responsibility. You have to think like a business owner.
So be crystal clear on the Purpose of your meeting and compare any potential distraction to this Purpose.
Be prepared so you can manage disruptions and be a trustworthy steward of your teammates’ time during your meetings.
And having only the right teammates in your meetings is important too.
Let me explain.
Manage disruptions by having only the right people in your meetings
Investing the time and energy to intentionally design your meeting participant list has many benefits.
But many people don’t realize how knowing who the right people are for a particular meeting help you manage disruptions.
This scenario explains it:
Imagine you’re about to start a meeting and some people haven’t arrived yet.
So you wait a few minutes and make small talk with those who arrived on time.
But your mind is racing trying to decide what to do.
Should you keep waiting – as the small talk conversation begins to drag?
Should you proceed?
Or should you cancel the entire meeting?
Your meeting plan has been disrupted and you have to adjust.
You have to make the best decision you can and make it quickly.
If you’ve clearly defined the Purpose of the meeting and decided in advance who needs to be in this meeting to accomplish the Purpose, you don’t need to panic.
If the right people are there, start.
If they aren’t, you have choices.
You can wait until the right people arrive or you can cancel the meeting.
Whatever choice you make, you’ve managed the disruption created when not everyone showed up for your meeting.
How do you know who the “right” people are for a particular meeting?
I mentioned the answer above, but let me highlight the question you need to ask as you create your meeting invitation:
🔷 Who needs to be in this meeting to accomplish the Purpose?
That’s exactly what you need to know before AND during your meeting.
This knowledge helps you in another way when you’re adjusting to manage disruptions during your meetings.
How a detailed agenda helps you manage disruptions to your meetings
Let’s go back to the previous scenario.
What do you do if most of the participants have arrived, but the main decision maker isn’t there yet?
If the primary Purpose of your meeting is to make a decision, you’ve likely put it first on your agenda.
You know you need to cover the most important topics first not last just in case you run out of time or your meeting is unexpectedly cut short.
But, you’ve also probably included other lower priority topics on your agenda too.
So, if the person you need to make the decision isn’t present, you can move to a different agenda item.
But, you can manage a meeting disruption like this ONLY IF you have a detailed agenda budgeting your meeting time.
An agenda prepared in advance will equip you to adjust quickly and make a good decision for the business.
This technique also works great when someone must step out of a meeting.
How to use this technique when someone must step out of a meeting
You and I both know this happens often in the business world.
When your boss calls, it’s usually a good idea to answer the phone – even if that means you need to leave the meeting.
This is especially true if your boss is the CEO (at least that was my policy when I was in this situation)!
So, when someone needs to step out of your meeting to take a call from “the boss” (or the school principal – because our personal lives and responsibilities don’t stop just because we’re at work), you’ll know if you can take a break and still accomplish your Purpose.
Your detailed agenda will save you!
You can simply say something like this to manage the disruption of someone leaving your meeting:
“Liz had to step out to take a call from her manager.
She told me before the meeting to be prepared for this since they’re finalizing a big customer contract.
We need her input to make this decision so we’re going to take our planned 10-minute break now instead of at 11:00.
We’ll reconvene at 10:45.”
But without the proper Preparation, you won’t be equipped to say something like that and manage your meeting and the natural disruptions that occur.
And the unplanned phone call from Liz’s supervisor will leave you guessing about the impact the delay will have.
And, speaking of meeting disruptions that occur, let me share some actual examples from my career.
Actual meeting disruptions from my career
About a year ago, I took the time to write down the meeting disruptions I experienced in a very short time period – just over a week.
During those few days, all of these things directly or indirectly disrupted my meetings:
- Discussions exceeding the budgeted time (for good reason)
- Important topics missed on the original agenda
- Jury duty (not just once but twice)
- Physical health issues
- Mental health issues
- Family emergencies
- Technical problems
- Canceled flights
- Delayed flights
- Resignations
And there were even more I didn’t record…
Things like this mess up my meeting plans just like they do yours.
So be prepared to manage disruptions to your meetings because you KNOW they’re going to happen.
You’re leading your business in the real world!
More Resources to Help You Build Your Career and Your Business
People are often the biggest disruptors of meetings and you need more than the tips I shared above to tactfully manage those situations.
Here are some resources to help you.
✅ How to Deal with Disruptive People During Meetings (an insightful blog post from calendar.com)
These resources I’ve created also give more details on how to deal with interruptions in a meeting:
✅ How To Stop Someone From Rambling So They Can Be Heard (Blog post)
✅ How To Protect Your Meeting From A Rambler (Podcast)
✅ How To Politely Interrupt Someone In A Meeting (Blog post)
✅ How To Empathize With A Rambler In Your Meeting (Blog post)
And Now a Word from Our Sponsors
The 3Ps of Leading a Productive, Effective meeting will protect you from the disruptions that continually threaten your meetings.
- Purpose – Why is this meeting being held?
- People – Who needs to be in this meeting to accomplish the Purpose?
- Preparation – What work needs to be done prior to the meeting to enable the People to accomplish the Purpose?
You can download the 3Ps Worksheet to improve your meetings by clicking here or on the image.
The pdf format makes it easy to print and use with your meetings.
And it’s FREE!
That’s All for this Issue
I do my best to write meeting tips that will help you in the real world of business.
Life is complex and people are too, so we need to be ready to adjust and adapt when unexpected events occur.
You won’t always be completely prepared but when you have these three meeting essentials in place, I’m confident you’ll manage the disruptions to your meetings without missing a beat!
- A Clear Purpose
- The Right People
- A Prepared Agenda
Let’s lead with kindness and confidence!
Greg
Here are 3 ways I can help you when you’re ready:
- Get more free resources you can use today (Click here to Start)
- Improve on your own with digital courses (Click here to Improve)
- Accelerate your progress with coaching (Click here to Accelerate)
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