How To Prep For A Meeting In 3 Easy Steps

Have you ever lead a meeting where it felt like a big waste of time and felt unproductive? Chances are you didn’t have a simple process to rely on when preparing for a meeting. The trick to preparing for highly productive meetings can be broken down into 3 steps.

Before jumping into the 3 step process, I came across a statistic that caught my eye; In a survey conducted by Microsoft, employees reported a 51% increase in the frequency of meetings during the pandemic.

Meetings can be productive uses of time, but the overwhelming majority of people agree that they are also a huge time suck. It’s important to be as productive as possible to protect our busy schedules. This is especially true now as remote work blends into our personal lives.

In this post, I’ll breakdown my tried and tested approach I use when preparing for a meeting, give you some tips for each step, and provide a simple template to capture action plans. 

Preparing For A Meeting: 3 Steps

When preparing for a meeting , I take the following steps:

1. Intentionally think about the purpose of the meeting
2. Outline the process or agenda that serves the purpose
3. Document the outcome I intend to achieve by the end of the meeting

II call this approach the P.P.O. agenda meeting template.

Other questions I also think about are:

• Who are my audience members?
• What do they most care about?
• How do I want to engage them?
• What visuals can I bring to illustrate the conversation? (This is increasingly important to keep the audience engaged in a virtual setting!)

I use this format to not just plan meetings, but to ensure they are a productive use of everyone’s time. By explicitly stating the purpose, process, and outcome, the facilitator and audience are on the same page right from the beginning of the meeting. Let’s get into the details about each step.

1. Think About The Purpose

First, start with intentionally thinking about the purpose of the meeting. This is a critical step when preparing for a meeting because it communicates to your audience exactly why you have called this meeting. It will provide more context and allow the audience to be more aligned on the topic. 

I’ve been in countless meetings where the purpose was never articulated, which left many people wondering why the meeting was called in the first place. Can you think of a time you experienced a similar situation? How ambiguous did it feel? By explicitly stating the purpose of the meeting at the beginning, you will give your audience clarity and drive better engagement. Here are a few prompts to craft your purpose of calling the meeting:

• Explain what you are trying to achieve by initiating this meeting.
  • Are you trying to determine next steps, reach a decision, or keep it purely informational for updates?
• Determine are the audience members in this meeting.
  • Are they high-level executives or subject matter experts closer to the front line?
• What information can you bring to the meeting so that everyone can be on the same page quicker?

Once the purpose of your meeting has been clarified, start brainstorming the topics you want to cover.

2. Outline The Process

The second step when preparing for a meeting is determining the process of the meeting, or more commonly the agenda for the meeting. This is a part of meeting planning that most people are already familiar with (I hope!). Create your agenda for the meeting using the information anchored on your purpose. See the tips below to help:

• Try to number the agenda items to encourage a sequence of talking points
• If there are multiple people leading the meeting, designate who and how long they have for each talking point
• Be cognizant of the audience members: Executives will typically want more high-level information whereas subject matter experts and front-line team members want to get into the details
• Encourage engagement from the audience members by asking them open-ended questions
• Build in “pause time” (a few seconds between topics) to allow your audience to process information and ask questions – this will drive engagement
• Ask them for their reactions to the information shared so far
• Bring props and illustrations to switch up the dynamic of the meeting – PowerPoint is fine, but consider using videos, virtual white boards like Miro or Mural

Develop a flow and sequence of talking points that will guide your audience to the result(s) you are trying to achieve. This brings us to the last step in the framework: the outcome.

3. Document The Intended Outcome

The last step of preparing for a meeting is asking yourself, by the end of the meeting, what would you like the group to have accomplished? This is a part of the meeting that many people do not articulate at the beginning. Without stating the outcome(s) you are hoping to achieve, it can often drive your audience to discuss out-of-scope topics, spin in circles, and shift the agenda to be conversational. Have you ever felt like you’ve lost control of the audience?

Stating the outcome can feel redundant after already stating the purpose, but there is some nuance. The purpose is intended to state why the meeting is happening, whereas the outcome is to drive towards a specific action (i.e., a decision is reached, everyone in agreement, consensus on next steps, etc.). Here are some tips to help you accomplish your intended outcome by the end of the meeting:

• At the beginning of the meeting be explicit and say “I’m hoping to accomplish ________ by the end of the meeting”
• If the outcome is aligning on a decision by the end of the meeting, ensure your agenda is driving towards that:
  • mention that you will ask for go / no go decisions by the end of the meeting;
  • use a consensus model;
  • ask if there are any concerns or hesitations before moving forward; and/or
  • ask for commitment to next steps.
• Take it one step further and create a table of next steps to identify “what,” “who,” and “by when.” Send it to your audience members at the end of the meeting – this is a good way to illustrate the conversation as previously mentioned:

Closing

Applying the PPO format when preparing for a meeting will help you lead incredibly productive meetings. Additionally, this approach will not only help you get in the right headspace, but also build your confidence while leading meetings. Don’t be that person who calls a meeting that people feel like is a waste of time. Feel free to experiment and get creative using the PPO format today, see what a dynamic shift it can create, and what results can be achieved in your next important meeting!