Cameron Herold explains why meetings often fail and gives a practical checklist for running effective meetings: always set a clear purpose and agenda before inviting people; limit meetings to a maximum of three outcomes; state agenda items with allotted minutes and a communication style (infoshare, creative discussion, consensus decision); start on time and stop five minutes early; assign a moderator and timekeeper; use a parking lot; and often book meetings for half the initially expected duration. He also emphasizes one-on-one coaching should focus less on task follow-up and more on caring for employees — asking for feedback on meetings, preparing beforehand, and using one-on-ones to support, remove obstacles, and grow direct reports rather than only tracking tasks.
Questions this video answers
Meetings Suck.
A Zoom call, a phone call with two or more people, or an in-person meeting.
Every meeting should start on time and stop five minutes prior to the scheduled ending time; book meetings for half the time you first think.
Have a maximum of three outcomes from the meeting.
Infoshare, creative discussion, or consensus decision (stated on the agenda with minutes per item).
Chapters
Really, really good opportunity for feedback and growth as a leader is to ask your direct reports, how was that meeting? Did you get what you needed? And all of a sudden they go, yeah, it was a five out of ten. You're like, Whoa, that sucks. I just spent 30 minutes doing a one on one with you that you rated a five out of ten. I suck as a boss. A meeting is a zoom call. A phone call with two or more people or an in person meeting. That's a meeting. I wrote a book called Meetings Suck. And I was just talking to somebody the other day and he was interviewing me and he said, why do meetings suck? And I said, look, it's not that meetings suck, it's that we suck at running meetings. Right? He thought that I wanted to eliminate meetings in a company. I'm like, no, not at all. Maybe the title of the book is actually confusing. What I'm trying to doing is saying we suck at running meetings or how to get better at running meetings. Because the reality is we have to run them. Every meeting has to start on time and every meeting stops five minutes prior to the scheduled ending time. Which gives us all time to walk down the hall, talk to our assistant, go to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee and sit down to start the next phone call or meeting exactly on time. Unless you're training people on that or practicing that, then of course meetings suck. Make sure that everybody knows the steps and that we always force ourselves to follow the steps. So that's putting an agenda in place first before you invite people. It's having a clear purpose. What's the one reason we're coming? It's having a maximum of three outcomes from the meeting. It's having the agenda that says what are we covering in what order and how many minutes on each agenda item. And then it's even talking about the communication style that happens for each agenda item, whether it's infoshare, creative discussion or consensus decision so that people know what are we showing up for? Why am I showing up? What are we covering? In what order? How many minutes am I really needed? And then they can decide if based on that content and the agenda, they even need to go. And then it's creating a culture internally where people can put their hand up and going, hey, I saw the agenda, I saw the purpose and outcome, I don't need to be there for that. Or I saw the agenda. I'm only going to come for the first three points. I'm going to leave for the next six because I have other work that's higher ROI than me sitting and listening to a team discuss something that I know I'm not going to be involved in the decision with. And it allows the leaders to not have to invite everybody because we're going to hurt their feelings. Because then we're good at actually knowing why we're not getting invited and we're good at managing conflict, one of the modules, so we can actually have that discussion to tell people, I can't invite you to every darn meeting. You have other work to do. It's just kind of following that basic agenda. Start on time, stop on time, book all the meetings for half the time. You first think about booking them for. Have a moderator, a timekeeper in a parking lot. And you can see how well I know that content. To be able to rattle off the rules for having highly effective meetings, you need anyone in your company that books a meeting to know the content just as well. Otherwise, yes, meetings suck. And then the problem is that we frustrate people. We waste their time. People spend more time getting to a discussion. We have too many people and not enough resources working on the other work. That's the kind of impact of knowing that content and really, really managing that content. Really, really good opportunity for feedback and growth as a leader is to ask your direct reports, how was that meeting? Did you get what you needed? And all of a sudden they go, yeah, it was a five out of ten. You're like, Whoa, that sucks. I just spent 30 minutes doing a one on one with you that you rated a five out of ten. I suck as a boss. Right? What can we do to make that meeting better? Well, I need more time to talk or I need more time to brainstorm or I need more cheering me on or I need you to recognize me for what I just completed. Oh, okay. So I would use make sure that you have a system but occasionally once a month ask them or even twice a month. How was that meeting? How can we make it tighter? How can we make it better? I also would make sure that you as the leader prep before you go into the one on one meetings so that you don't have to ask the questions that are already in asana or that are already on the metrics dashboard. Right. You should have systems in place so that your one on one meeting is not task. Follow up constantly. The last thing you want to be doing is following up on a project. Following up on a project, following up on a project when you have the opportunity to actually be there to grow their skills and grow their confidence. If you want more leadership tips and systems from me? They're free at YouTube. Amronherald and that's H e r o l D the other thing around one on one coaching is to remember, and I think this is really really critical, that all of our direct reports have lives and their lives include their spouse, their partner, their kids, their hobbies, their fears, their parents, their insecurities, their health, their budgets and everybody's stressed. And if we as a leader don't show up actually giving a about our employees personal lives, they're never going to care about their projects and their goals ever. So our one on one meeting is about us giving a about our employees. Our one on one meeting is about us giving a about our employees. It is about us caring. Not just when their birthday is and what their dog's name is, but like how are you doing? One of my team who has been with me for about seven or eight years had a big fire in his home and had to move out and spent about a year living at his parents home. I guarantee you I asked him about his living conditions and his fire constantly and then cheered him on when he finally got back in. I couldn't do anything to help him, but the fact that I empathized and recognized on a weekly basis that that was hard meant a lot to him. So the one on one coaching meeting isn't us following up, following up, following up. It's often us flipping the org chart upside down so that we're there to support them, to grow them, to give them confidence, to remove obstacles, to care about them. You can have systems in place to follow up on projects. So it's really important to make sure that you think about that as part of your one on one coaching system is caring is probably more important than almost anything else we do.
