How can we plan and facilitate effective and engaging meetings? In this episode, we explore strategies for getting the most out of the time spent together with your teams.

Rachel Myers, Founder | RM + Company

Rachel has over 23 years of experience working on all sides of philanthropy. She served for 12 years as an Executive Director for two nonprofit organizations and has worked for the past 9 years on the funder side at her local community foundation. Along the way, she's also served as a trustee for 11 years for her local public library board. The experience of working both as a staff member, and as a volunteer board member has provided her with unique insights on how boards and staff can effectively work together to make more good things happen.

As a consultant and collaborator, she offers expertise in strategic assessment, board training, communications strategy, fund development, planned giving, meeting facilitation and more.

3 things that need to happen for an effective meeting:

1. The purpose of the meeting is clearly defined, and we achieve that purpose during our time together
2. The meeting time is valuable (and enjoyable/energizing/bonding) for all the participants
3. All the meeting attendees are engaged and contribute to the work and outcomes of the meeting. Researchers have found that the strongest predictor of meeting success is active involvement by the participants!

4 P's:

1. Purpose - Why are we meeting? What problem are we trying to solve and could we accomplish this in another way? (Loom, shared doc, online collab tool like Miro, etc.)
2. Product - What will we produce together? What outcomes will we have from this meeting? Specific decisions, direction, strategy, choice, etc
3. People - Who needs to be present to make this happen? What’s in it for each of them? What is their role and how will they contribute? Do they need to participate, or can we update them in notes or Loom?
4. Process - How will we spend our time to meet our purpose and outcomes? AKA: the agenda. Here’s a mind-blowing tip – challenge yourself to never send out a meeting request without including an agenda – or at a minimum a clear summary of the meeting purpose. Another important part of this step is to think through what tools you are going to need for the meeting – if it is virtual, will you need a whiteboard like Jamboard or Miro, do you need to poll the group, or collect notes in some shared format during the meeting? Make sure you have all of the tools you need to be successful. Add a “purpose” column to your agenda – Time, Agenda Item, Presenter/Lead, PURPOSE, Outcome.

IEEI:

1. Inform – Ensure that everyone in the meeting understands your objectives and purpose. “When we leave this meeting today, we will ___________” 
2. Empower – Describe the role the attendees will play and the power they will have (you will have articulated that in the 4Ps above). Make sure they understand why they are there and what contributions you need from them. 
3. Excite – This is the “What’s in it for them” part.  Share the benefits of the meeting and why it is important to each person – and to the organization as a whole. 
4. Involve – engage attendees early and often with a question or activity that connects them to each other and the meeting purpose.  

Links:

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• Website: Foundant.com

Time is precious time. We can't create more time. And so always thinking with that lens when you're preparing a meeting, how this meeting be valuable for every person in the room.

Welcome to Connected Philanthropy today, Rachel Meyers, who has been hosting the last few episodes, will be swapping roles and acting as our guest. She's going to be talking about how to have great meetings with over 23 years working in the philanthropic sector and now working as a consultant. I would consider Rachel a bit of a meeting expert. She discusses the best way to plan, run and follow up on meetings and seeing as so many of us spend so much time during the work week in meetings, it seems like things we should pay attention to.

So with that, let's dive right in. Here's Rachel.

I've been thinking a lot about meetings. You know, I think I've always been a big fan of, you know, putting the time and effort into preparing for a meeting to get the most out of it. But once I started working as a consultant and working with organizations, you know, with different cultures and different approaches, obviously to meetings and getting work done, I've it's almost like heightens the importance of how crucial meetings really are for all of us.

You know, there's so much time spent, as you know, in meetings and yet and they're so important they can be so powerful. That's where we make decisions. That's where strategies are set. That's where, you know, paths forward are carved in so many ways. And yet at the same time, we've all had that experience of sitting in the meeting thinking, hmm, not sure this is the best use of my time right now.

And I was doing a little research. A recent article in The Atlantic found that unnecessary meetings waste $37 billion a year and that only about 50% of time in meetings is used effectively. So. Ouch. But I just really started thinking more and more and more. How can we how can I, you know, plan and facilitate really engaging meetings?

Yeah, I went to business school. I was a business management major and they don't have a class on having great meetings. How to do meetings? Everyone does meetings differently. I think most people are bad at meetings, myself included. I was also having a conversation before this with someone that was like, I wish I could anonymously send this podcast to a previous boss of mine.

So many people need to hear this, whether they know it or not. So are there any other challenges we should set up before we dive into some of the tips?

I think you hit it on the head with the idea that I also I mean, I didn't go to business school, but I have a college degree and in journalism and public relations. And I also was never taught the skills, I mean, of how to plan and facilitate a good meeting. And when you think about how wild that is, because we all spend, again, so much time and energy in meetings, it kind of blows my mind.

And I've been able to pick up some tips and ideas from great, you know, from folks who did have great skills in those areas. But there's not enough folks out there. I hear what you're saying. There's so many of us who the only thing we've known is maybe like mediocre meetings or even poor meetings. So that's all we have to work with and we just continue down that path.

So I think, yeah, I think that's the challenge is just kind of shaking up our thinking about how meetings have been and thinking about the potential for what meetings could look like. So in my mind there are three things that happen in an effective meeting. Number one, the purpose is clearly defined, and during the meeting we achieve that purpose, which sounds so basic, but so many times I think a meeting is called and we're not clear about the purpose.

And so it's impossible to reach it if you don't know what it is. The second thing in my mind is like the meeting time itself is valuable and ideally energize in engaging like, dare I say, bonding for the folks who are there in the room. The third thing that I think about when I'm designing meetings and in some ways the most important I think, is that all the meeting attendees are engaged and that they have contribute.

They feel that they have contributed to the success of the meeting. And I think, you know, research shows that the strongest predictor of meeting success is active involvement by the participants. And yet I myself have experienced many, many meetings where I you know, the meeting is almost over and I haven't been asked the question. There's been no opportunity to contribute.

I'm really not a part of what's happening.

And do you naturally just jump in? Are you one of those people that will voice a concern without being asked? Because I'm definitely not. I feel like I need a direct someone to ask me directly at a meeting.

I mean, I the mental image I have of myself is like sitting on my hands until I can't anymore. You know, it's like I've got to step in here. So I definitely, you know, I like when I my just funny little things like facilitators got to facilitate. Like once you see this opportunity to like, oh we, there's, we need to talk more about that Like there's a decision that needs to be made there.

I almost always just naturally jump in. But I think too, this reminds me of, you know, I guess a tip or a suggestion for those who are listening. I think about an experience I had several years ago where I started volunteering for an organization and I was coming to the meetings once a month. That was the commitment. And after the first three meetings I attended, I realized each of the meetings were 2 to 2 and a half hours, and in all three of those meetings, I had not contributed an idea or a suggestion.

Any feedback? There had been no engagement in that. A lot of time as a volunteer to contribute to an organization. Right. And I so I finally was like, okay, is this really not the right spot for me? Or is it just I need to have that, you know, kind and yet candid conversation with the leader of this organization to say, hey, this is my experience in the meetings.

I really I join this effort because I want to help, you know, support you and make a difference. But I feel like all I'm doing is listening and not, you know, you're not leveraging me, you're not tapping into any of my expertise. And so luckily, she was super open to that feedback and was sort of ready to redesign how we met as a group.

And I ended up staying involved with that group for, you know, over a decade. So I think that there is a piece of it as a, as a meeting participant. If you're not designing the the time together, you know, find a way to sort of kindly that with candor, you know, share like, Hey, this is my experience in the meeting.

I feel like, like, let me can we think through how to engage the team or the group or the committee more fully during the meetings themselves. I would I would encourage folks to do that because that's the only way you're probably going to find a shift in that time.

Yeah, and I think leaders or people setting up meetings would really appreciate a conversation like that because they might just be making it up as they go too. And I know it might seem confrontational or like an uncomfortable conversation to say, Hey, my experience in this meeting has been subpar. Any chance you can provide honest feedback is probably good.

And I think, too, there is kind of a feeling that meetings are having this like renaissance moment because online meetings have have provided all these new tools, all these different ways of connecting polls and shared documents and online whiteboards and Miro and all kinds of things like that, that they do bring a creativity and some sort of new ways of collaborating into the meeting space that maybe in-person meetings, you know, we didn't always utilize those things in in-person meetings perhaps.

So there is also that sort of how can we leverage this time, you know, more effectively? And I think and then, you know, as you and I have talked about before as well, like are there pieces of this meeting that are just report outs that we could do in a different way, that we could do through a loom video, that we could do through, again, like a shared document or just an email update or using our project management tool, whatever that is.

And then at the meeting itself, we know we all need to come prepared and we're going to dig deeper into these three questions. So yeah, I think there there is a way to do it in a way that's like, let's make this better, you know, and sort of, whoa, that meeting was painful.

Well, I mean, just thinking of the three things you shared purpose and then making the meeting engaging, energizing, bonding, those social connections and three, engaging, just like you said, it does seem very basic and like, duh. But I think if you just pause and think of those three things sometimes to your point, you will realize, Oh, the purpose is just to update people.

That's an email, that's a loom video. So yeah, I think thinking of those three things is very important, both for an effective meeting, but also one kind of gauging. Does this even need to be a meeting?

Absolutely yeah. And the four P’s are sort of my, my guideline when I'm getting ready to, to plan a meeting. And the first one is purpose. Obviously we've touched on that one already, but why are we meeting? And then secondly is product, that's the second P and that's like, what are we creating in this meeting?

What will this meeting produce?

What will it produce? Will there be a decision? Will there will be narrow it down to a couple of options? Are we talking about a strategy? Are we, you know, getting rid of something like what exactly what will come out of this that we all know is part you know, is our goal is one of our goals for this meeting.

And then when you have real clarity around purpose and product, then you can think about who needs to be here in order for us to create this product or make this decision or set this strategy. And once you have all of that, then creating the agenda, then then really thinking about the process itself. So how will we get there?

Thank you for sharing those. The four P’s Purpose product people and process. I'm going to just put that in the show notes. I think that's one of the most valuable sticky things that people can take using the four P’s and making sure you think through each of those, you will have a successful meeting.

So absolutely, yeah. And then that takes you kind of into the facilitation side, which really is the facilitation of the actual meeting time, which is really different than the planning. Like the planning is its own piece of the puzzle and then the facilitation piece where you really think through and like sort of the you zoom in on that engagement and contribution side of the the meeting is another area where I've learned so much from watching great facilitators.

One of the reasons I like to sometimes go to trainings and sort of gatherings is just to watch really good facilitators at work, because one of the big learnings I've had around facilitation, I mean there's a there's a process that I'll share in just a second. But one of the things that I've really learned a ton from is just remembering this is for any training or facilitation that people learn and engage in a lot of different ways.

I really like to talk, as is probably evident from these podcasts. I'm a verbal auditory learner processor. That is something I really enjoy. But lots of folks, some people are visual or that's their go to. All of us are visual in some way, but that's their go to. Some folks are definitely reflective. They're more, I want to think about this privately, maybe talk to one person I don't want to share out with the whole group.

That's not my comfort area. So really also in that people piece thinking about, you know, why are they here, what's in it for them, but also like how how do they what do they need from me as a facilitator to show up at their best?

I want to dive into facilitating. There's another acronym IEEI could you explain what IEEI means?

Yes. So I came across this in a training a year or so ago and I love the IEEI. So it's inform, empower, excite and involve so it's especially important, I believe the IEEI framework at the beginning of any meeting. So inform gets back to these are our objectives and purpose. I actually use this phrase a lot when we leave this meeting today.

We will whatever it is we're going to do, we will have decided on our theme for next next year's gala. We will have chosen a direction for X, y, Z initiative. This is what we are going to do. So that's inform and then Empower gets back to what you just said. The role. Like who? Why are you here?

And then Excite is it sounds kind of mercenary, but it's really what's in it for them. So make sort of drawing the the line really clearly between the purpose of the meeting and how it will benefit you personally, because sometimes that's really clear, but sometimes it's again like, well, I'm not really sure. I don't usually work with this team, like why was I invited?

So then you just, you know, again, stated very clearly like we wanted you here because you're part of this X, Y, Z team, and that team is going to be impacted a lot depending on which direction we go with this decision. So then you're like, okay, I do want to have a voice because I see where this comes back to hit my job.

And then involve is all about engaging folks. So I one of the things that I believe online meetings has taught me as a facilitator is there's not there's no such thing as too much engagement in a meeting. So engage early and often is my go to when I design meetings. So ask a question right up front, do another poll put folks into breakout rooms, You know, just keep creating opportunities for folks to engage.

And I'll tell you, I've since a master facilitators, I've taken some trainings from folks who are masters and they incorporate so many engagement points and they do not have to be long type into chat. Your thoughts about blah, blah, blah. I mean, whatever it is that you're consistently creating a feedback loop with your audience with or with your with your attendees and in person, it's even more exciting, in my opinion, because the thing I love to do now when I facilitate in person is get people to move their bodies around the room, because we can't do that.

I mean, you can move, but you can't like, you know, go far away. So, you know, setting up a poll like I had a friend, another friend who's a facilitator and he started bringing painter's tape to his in person since facilitations and he'll set up basically a pole on the floor with his painters tape and have people walk to like where they're at.

On the question, I just thought that was genius. So I'll do that sometimes with giant sticky notes, too, where you're like, okay, you know, are you are you more on this side of this question? Are you more over here? And it's just, yeah, engagement. As I said, early and often.

If you're not having engagement, why are you even having a meeting? Really? If you don't want that feedback and you don't want people involved, it probably should be an email or a non meeting.

You're absolutely right. Yeah. If you're bringing people together, there must be a reason. And if there isn't a reason, then you shouldn't be bringing people together.

The four P’s and IEEI.

Those are my, those are in my back pocket all the time. As a facilitator.

I wanted to ask you about people specifically. Do you go as far as to actually like assign, you know, Logan, you’re the facilitator we would like this person would be a note taker. These are consultants or do you not go that far as to actually like really granular with this is your purpose and this is the role you're going to play?

Oh, no, I like to I like to be really specific about roles. I think it's so useful for everyone in the meeting to understand what their role is. And so it is easy to sort of highlight that when you are the facilitator. So every meeting where I am a facilitator, I will at some point near the beginning of me and say, You know my name, I'm the facilitator, here's my job in this meeting.

I'm going to be leading that, you know, connecting dots, asking questions, keeping us on track time wise, making sure everyone has an opportunity to contribute, you know, whatever. I've you know, this is my role as facilitator. And then I'll if we do have a note taker, you know, definitely say, hey, so-and-so's a note taker. They're staying on top of things.

So if they ask you a follow up question, please help them stay on track. And then I'll say and then your job, you know, there could be other potentially other jobs in the room. But then I'll say, like your job, the reason you're here is to and then like, get very specific. Like I just facilitated a meeting last night and it was like a community engagement meeting around the assessment that had been done in that community around some critical areas.

So so your role as the folks who are participating this meeting is you're the experts on this community, you know this, You live here, you work here, you know this community. And now we want to hear from you. Like what concerns what questions, what hopes you have, you know, what areas are you most concerned about, that kind of thing.

So then people are like, okay, that's the hat I have on right now. And then, oh, in that meeting we had experts who were like presenting the data or the information. So then we introduced them. This is their role, they've done this analysis, etc. But I think, you know, there is there's a lot of science out there around how it when you understand why you're why you're there, like this is this is what I'm meant to be doing.

It lowers your anxiety about like and the opposite is also true. If you're sitting there thinking, why am I here? Why is this? Am I supposed to say anything? Because again, you are helping people understand what they're meant to be doing and then they can achieve it. If you don't know, then you have a hard time hitting the mark.

Well, any other tips? I know we've talked a lot about meetings, but how about kind of the action items or maybe the follow up after a meeting? What are your thoughts on on that?

Yes, I think that is probably key. If we were to ask folks, my guess is that's the place where most many meetings will fall apart is sort of that answering the question now what? I actually think there's two questions. What did we decide? Or, you know, where did we land and what's next? So on the what did we decide question, I am an absolute huge fan of having some kind of visual representation of the discussion and decision making process.

So in person that is almost always a combination of like whiteboards and like large sticky notes, maybe small sticky notes, like creating some visual representation for everyone in the room to stay on track of. Like, okay, yes, we made this call. Now we're on this. Now we're now we're sort of rifling through this decision and then, okay, we landed here, but having sort of having to remember that mentally, which maybe it's because I'm 50 but that's just too much to ask now.

But having that visual reminds everyone in the room where we landed, and it's a great check in with the team, like, is this is this where we're at? Does this resonate with everyone? Is this correct? And virtually it's even easier in many ways to do that because you, again, bring up your online, you know, tool, whatever it is, online whiteboard of some kind where you're tracking input.

And I, I just can't say enough about the importance of having a tool where folks can see the progress of the discussion, meeting decision, whatever it is. So that's one thing like why did we decide on is this right? Yes, yes, yes or no? I don't think that's quite right. And then the second thing is, yeah, what is going to happen next and creating enough space and time.

There is a planning component to this and enough space and time in your meeting to capture that and then check in with everyone around the room. Okay. We landed on this, this and this. So before our next meeting, who's going to take this one? Or if you're the leader, you're like, I'd like this team to take this one on.

Will that how does that fit into your work skills or whatever this team's going to this? I'm in, I'm responsible for this. And everybody in the room either says, yes, that makes sense or I can't do that. Or What about so-and-so? They'd be actually better at that. Whatever it is. Getting some people attached to those steps is often super important part of a meeting that we don't leave time for.

And actually explicitly confirming with people. I think that's a step that's really important verbally saying, So this is what we agree upon. I'm going to pause. Does anyone not agree with this? That's totally fine if you do, but raise your hand. Sometimes there's not consensus, but because it was set in a meeting, it's assumed.

I think so too. And then the other thing I try to do, and this can be a huge challenge depending on how complex the meeting was and so forth, But if at all possible, I try to give follow up email outs about the meeting and sort of the summary decision points or whatever wherever we landed. And the next steps are action steps like within 24 hours, because otherwise we forget, you know, we're only human.

We go on.

I forget instantly within like 5 minutes.

You're like, Oh, we had a meeting about that. Okay, Right. I said I would do something. So I think, yeah, like the summary and getting that out, that's where the if the meetings virtual those online whiteboards can be fantastic because then you just link to one of those and like, okay, this is where we landed. Here's the next steps before we meet again.

Yeah.

Also something I was thinking about was the conversation you had with Sami about the value of when you're scheduling your meeting. Think about having 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after, because meeting prep is important and getting that email afterwards or jotting down the notes is super valuable. Oh.

Absolutely. Now I'm glad you brought that up. And I yeah, I stumbled across that idea from my friend who she told me. She's like, I always put 30 minutes after every meeting I have for follow up. And then I added the Oh, I'll do the prep too, because I'm often facilitating. I usually have more than half an hour actually, but but I get folks’s

Your your schedules are busy and at the same time I would challenge you to think about how much more you'll get out of that meeting if you schedule that 30 minutes ahead of time, just get yourself set so that you're ready to really rock that meeting. And then yeah, that post meeting follow up. Then you've then you've done it.

You don't even have to put it on your to do list. It's done. So I do like that strategy. Thanks for reminding me about that.

Yeah. Also something I don't know where I heard this, but somebody said that no matter what the length of your meeting is, whether it's 15 minutes or 4 hours, you will find a way to fill that time.

I agree with that. That's called something. It has like a scientific name that I can't think of right now. But no, I believe that is very true of just about all work, not just meetings. Like if there's a set, if there's a amount of time, you will you will probably take that amount of time. So that is a really good point of asking yourself, challenging yourself just because we always have hour long meetings, is that actually what's necessary for this group, for this purpose?

And when Sammie and I were talking about meetings in the webinar, we both agreed that 45 minutes is kind of a sweet spot, and a lot of the folks who we polled on the webinar agreed with that because it's enough time to have sort of a some opening, some context, some connection and then get to the work. But it's not, you know, often we might not need an hour to get, but we just because it's traditional, I mean, that's what I grew up going to.

If you were invited to a meeting, it was an hour long meeting, but that doesn't mean it needed to be an hourly meeting.

Well, as we're wrapping up, we've spent a lot of time talking about best practices, tips we can employ, how to have great meetings just for fun. I'm curious, do you have any horror stories or ineffective meeting examples that you'd like to share? I think we learn just as much from our mistakes or bad experiences as good experiences.

Oh, well, yeah. I mean, do I have do I have some some meetings? I sometime I'd like to get back from meetings. Yes, I do. 1,000% I think there's I sort of have the as a facilitator, you know, nightmare stories and then as a participant. But let's let's let's think about the participant ones. I think for me as a participant, I think about one gathering that I was invited to where there was quite a bit of prep we were asked to do for this meeting and some personal work as well.

And so my expectation for what this time together was going to be was based on that, that work. And we all came together and we shared the prep work that we did, but we didn't talk about it at all. It was sort of like, Here's my life, spend a little bit of my soul, and then, great, okay, that's a that's wrapped up.

And we moved on to the next thing. I was like, What just happened? I just really had that feeling of, yeah, not being valued in that moment, like, Oh, I spent all this time creating this that we're not. We're actually going to talk about something else. So I like that idea of like a feeling like someone gave you busy work or they asked you to contribute something to the meeting.

That actually wasn't used. I think any time that happens is a time when, yeah, that's not that's a recipe for very unengaged unhappy and yeah sort of people time is precious you know time we can't create more time and so always thinking with that lens when you're preparing a meeting how this meeting be valuable for every person in the room and help us, you know, obviously reach our objectives.

Well Rachel I think you are a meeting pro the plethora of experience you had before your consulting work and now as a consultant, I think definitely you've seen it all. And thank you for sharing your experience and your tips. Do you have a call to action that you'd like to leave our listeners with in a sign off at the end of this podcast?

Yeah, that's easy. I would say my biggest hope and call to action for this, those who are listening is take the time to plan and start with purpose and start with products. Why are we coming together and what are we going to create?

Not even the four P's, just two of the P's. That’s all.

Just two. And then Yeah, and then who needs to be here and and then what will our agenda be? But just challenge yourself to not start writing the agenda. Don't don't start with the agenda team. I'll just challenge you to start with first writing a purpose statement. I have a new agenda template that I started using and at the very top of it it says meeting purpose.

And then you have to write that statement. And I'll tell you, it's not as easy as you might think. So I challenge you to start with purpose and objectives or product and then think who needs to be here and how are we going to get this done?