In my post Effective Meetings: Turning Time into Results, I shared with you the story behind a series of workshops dedicated to running effective meetings and promised to delve deeper into each one.  

So, let’s dive into the first workshop!

Title: Basics of Meeting Preparation
Duration: 1.5 hours
Collaboration Board: Any you like

Initially, I aimed to keep it within one hour. I made an effort and we managed to stick to that timeframe. However, I strongly recommend allocating at least one and a half hours. Participants will likely want to ask questions, share comments and discuss their real-life examples.

The choice of tool for conducting the workshop is up to you. It depends on your situation. You can use platforms like Miro or Mural, or hold the meeting in person. The choice is yours.

After the standard steps of opening the meeting and establishing the rules, we move on to an important question:

Is it really necessary to call or meet? Maybe it’s enough to simply write your question in a messenger or send it by email?

To address this, we ask the following questions:
– Is it really necessary to have a call? Or can I ask the question offline? In a messenger or email?
– Is it worth waiting for the meeting to find out something? If I ask the question offline now, will I get a faster response?
– Is it really necessary to have a call, or is it enough to study the instructions and then ask the question offline if any arise after reading?
– Will this save time and effort for all participants?

After discussing the first block with the participants, move on to the second one.

Suppose you still have doubts. In that case, you can roughly estimate the cost of the meeting by taking the average hourly salary and multiplying it by the number of participants. Is your question really worth such expenses? For convenience, you can use an online calculator to quickly perform the necessary calculations.

After this discussion you can move on to the cases “What would you do if…”.

You present the case and ask the participants how they would act in that situation: Would they urgently gather people for a meeting? Write an email? Or choose some other option?

Here are examples of cases that I provided to the participants:
– Something has changed in your department’s processes.
– You need to ask a colleague something, but you’re feeling too lazy to write, so it’s easier to schedule a 15-minute meeting to find out everything.
– You don’t understand how something works in Jira.
– You don’t know where to find certain information in Confluence.

After completing this exercise, you can move on to the next workshop stage: Meeting — where to start? If you’ve confirmed the meeting is essential, how do you prepare to maximize its effectiveness?

This is where the 5P rule comes in handy:
Purpose: It is essential to define the purpose of the meeting. Why do I want to hold it? What is its value?
Product (result, artifact): What result is expected? What should be achieved by the end of the meeting? What artifact(s) should be produced in the end? How will you know that you have reached the goal of the meeting?
Participants: Who needs to be at the meeting? What is their understanding of the upcoming meeting?
Preparation (possible problems): What problems may arise? What pitfalls might hinder achieving the goal of the meeting or producing a result/artifact? What can be prepared in advance to avoid or minimize the risk of such problems?
Process: What steps must you take during the meeting to achieve the goal? What actions need to be taken, considering the specifics of the product/result (artifact), the list of participants, and potential problems?

When I conducted this workshop with one of the teams, we felt inspired and decided to add a sixth point to the list:
Prompt of Scrum Master: Don’t hesitate to reach out to the Scrum Master for help in preparing for the meeting or to ask the Scrum Master to facilitate it.

After that, suggest the participants discuss the necessity of a same-day meeting.
Of course, various situations may arise in real life. What should you do if a meeting is required on the same day and there is absolutely no time for preparation?

In this case, there is an MVP consisting of three essential points:

• Clear objective in the meeting title: The meeting title should clearly indicate what it is about.
• Add link to join: Please ensure that you have specified the meeting location and added all necessary links.
• Personally notify the participants and explain why there is such urgency.

At this stage, you can facilitate a discussion by inviting participants to share examples of successful and unsuccessful meeting titles.

You can also encourage them to come up with their own title suggestions and ask for feedback from others: which ones are good and which are not. If a title does not meet expectations, participants can suggest ideas on how to transform it into something more appealing and informative. This not only stimulates participation but also helps create an atmosphere of collaboration and creativity.

Then pay participants’ attention to: by going through these stages (the 5 P’s rule) and answering the questions, you are planning the meeting, considering the nuances and gaining structure and understanding. And that is already 50% of the success.

The next stage of the workshop can be a module where we aim to explore in detail the most common questions that arise when receiving a meeting invitation.
Here’s one example:
You’ve been invited as a participant in a meeting, but nothing is clear…
Why am I there? What is my role?
How to behave in this case?

Prepare such cases beforehand. You can give participants the opportunity to answer the questions themselves, and then confirm their thoughts and add to what was left unsaid.

Here is an example of an answer to the questions above, I wrote them on the card:

At the final stage, I conduct an exercise: I present a case and ask participants to solve it by applying all the knowledge and skills they have got during the workshop.

For example:

Read carefully what meeting you need to prepare and conduct.

Using the workshop materials, the 5 P’s rule, and your experience, develop a plan on how to start: goal, expected outcome, participants, potential pitfalls, what can be prepared in advance, what steps you need to take during the meeting, considering the specifics of the meeting itself.

You can do this individually or in a group.

The task: You need to conduct a brainstorming meeting for a new feature that needs to be implemented in the next quarter

It looks like this:

At the end of the workshop, I ask participants to rate it on a scale from 0 to 10. This rating will help me understand how useful and valuable it was. I also invite them to share their thoughts and wishes so that I can improve future sessions.

The feedback is key to improvement, and I sincerely value every opinion.

Please share your impressions of the design of my workshop. What aspects did you like? What would you change or add?

I eagerly await your feedback – feel free to do it. Together, we can make our workshops even more effective and inspiring!

Do not hesitate to contact me on Telegram or at LinkedIn – just click one of these words.