Running Smoother Meetings

We’ve all been in meetings where the conversation gets sidetracked or goes off the rails, and we know how hard it can be to bring it back.

Stopping the interrupting and talking over one another may sound easy enough to do but how do you do it without sounding like you are calling someone out?

What if the conversation reaches a standstill and gets stalled, how do you re-engage people? How do respectfully address challenging behaviours that happen in meetings? When one team member continually monopolizes the time and focus in a meeting, how do you address this in a way that doesn’t shut them down but invites the involvement of others?

Meeting courtesies are developed, and agreed to, by everyone in the group and serve as a guide to what kinds of behaviours are expected and accepted during meetings. They cover who can speak when, time limits, adding items to an agenda, interruptions, and more. They also clearly lay out how participants can bring up a courtesy that’s being breached in a way that’s non-judgmental and that maintains psychological health and safety.