The way to run a good meeting is for you to start long before it does. There are two aspects of preparation. One is to lay out, as clearly as possible, what you need to cover and what you want to achieve. That way you can keep things on target during the meeting because you'll know where you need to go. The other part is giving people everything they will reasonably need to prepare in advance.

Meet from Need, Not Habit

Don't have meetings because you're “supposed to.” Like any other form of communication, a meeting should take place because it's necessary to pursue common goals. If you do not need to have a meeting, or if the meeting will not achieve something more easily and efficiently than another activity, simply don't have it.

That bit of advice is pretty standard if you read anything about how to manage a meeting. However, like so many things, it's easier said than done. You're battling your own inclination to have meetings, and it may take some time to nudge yourself out of the almost physical urge for a get-together. Don't be afraid to try some innovation, like using high-tech methods to replace sitting in a room with others.

However, be aware that you're not the only one who may think in terms of meetings. Everyone else on your team thinks meetings are good to some degree, to say nothing of an organization that sees meetings as proof of productivity and any outside individuals and entities that may deal with your team. In the beginning, be judicious and cut as many meetings as possible. Be realistic and know you can need a meeting for many reasons, including, at times, having one because someone else insists. Just control it to the degree you can, and work to lower the number over time.

Meeting Intent

If you've ever walked into a meeting uncertain about what was going on, you understand why you must thoroughly address the question of intent and what you hope to accomplish. Announcing a meeting, even with a quick mention of the subject, is not enough. You must address the following:

• Who is calling the meeting

• Who is attending the meeting

• The subject of the meeting

• Meeting location, time, and duration

• Meeting objectives

Individuals need different types and amounts of information to prepare themselves for a public interaction. Even if some of this seems irrelevant to you, it's better to distribute it and not need it than to withhold it and leave some of the participants uncomfortable or even hostile. Some of the items — particularly the subject of the meeting and its objectives — will be vital to everyone. It's best to send this out first to be sure that you can set up the meeting in the first place. Once you know that you can, it's time to proceed to the additional information you need to send.

Provide an Agenda

Distribute a detailed agenda to the participants in advance. You should send it long enough ahead of time that people can raise questions and suggest agenda items before you enter the meeting room. This will let you incorporate the concerns of others in a coherent way while giving them a way of responding to and, yes, buying in to the entire process. But don't think of an agenda as a simple list of points. It's a road map you design to start at one point and end at a different point, accomplishing your objectives along the way. The agenda helps attendees better know how to prepare. Just as importantly, it forces you to more thoroughly consider what you want to do in the meeting. Use it as an exercise to understand how the meeting — and its objectives — relate to the team's goals.

Get the Backup Out

There are two reasons to distribute materials at a meeting. Someone could be presenting some sensitive information that you want to keep under control, or you could want to use the emotional wave of surprise in a group setting. If the information is relatively simple, then, by all means, have a blast at your event.

However, you might also want people to digest complex data, consider an in-depth study, or otherwise use their brains and talents to do something useful. In that case, the only sane thing to do is to send out reports, charts, and packets of material ahead of time. A meeting is a constrained and artificial environment. If you wait to hand out your materials at the beginning of the meeting itself, there is no conceivable way people can actually pay attention to them, as well as to everything that happens in the meeting, and appreciate the work that went into them. Plus, by setting up a difficult situation, you make people resentful, which means you can likely kiss goodbye the chance that they will do anything after the meeting.

The solution is simple. Before the meeting, arrange to circulate all the necessary materials and data so everyone has time to review them. You want productive time in the meeting, not a show of people reading. Just as an agenda gives you a chance to think through what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it, the backup documents serve the same purpose. If the agenda provides the road map, the documents describe the terrain and what you need to do to succeed.

You can also increase buy-in and participation by having other people attending the meeting prepare necessary items. Often the material must come from them anyway because they are responsible for the appropriate areas. So let them be completely and visibly involved.