Ep 10: Reclaim Your Time: The Strategic Leader's Approach to Effective Meetings

In this episode, Claire  Laughlin dives into the art of effective meetings and how to transform them from time-wasters into productive, energizing experiences.

What You'll Learn:

• The invisible workflow that underlies all good work and why understanding it matters for meeting design
• The five essential meeting types that every leader should master: 

1. Ideation Meetings for defining problems and generating solutions
2. Decision-Making Meetings for evaluating options and making clear choices
3. Planning and Enabling Meetings for creating actionable roadmaps 
4.  Implementation Meetings (or "huddles") for alignment and quick adjustments
5. Learn and Review Meetings for continuous improvement

• How to define clear purposes and outcomes for every meeting
• Techniques for identifying exactly who needs to be in the room
• Strategies for transforming existing standing meetings
• Practical steps you can take immediately to improve your meetings

Key Takeaways:

• Most leaders have never been taught how to design and run effective meetings, yet they spend a significant portion of their time in them
• Common meeting problems include ambiguous agendas, revisiting the same ideas repeatedly, unclear decisions, and poor communication of outcomes
• Even if you're not the meeting organizer, you can influence meeting effectiveness through thoughtful questions and suggestions

Resources: 

Improve you meetings immediately by using these meeting templates for different meeting types, available here:  www.clairelaughlin.com/resources

Challenge for the Week:

Pick one recurring meeting on your calendar that isn't as productive as it could be. Identify the stage of work it addresses, clarify its purpose and desired outcome, ensure you have the right people attending, and structure the conversation to achieve your outcome.