Full Transcript

Are you a leader who’s ready to take their organization to the next level? Well, then stick around for today’s episode on the Meeting Leadership podcast because today, we’re going to give you 10 reasons why effective meetings will grow your business.

Are you a professional who wants to become a more effective leader? Then get ready for practical tips from the coach with the experience and inspiration to help you succeed in any leadership situation. You’re listening to the Meeting Leadership podcast with Gordon Sheppard.

Welcome to another episode of the Meeting Leadership podcast. My name is Gordon Sheppard, and I just want to say thanks. Thanks for taking time out of your valuable day, no matter what you’re doing. Maybe you’re on the treadmill, maybe you’re driving in the car, whatever you’re doing, you’re actually taking the time to listen to this show because you know that you want to grow your leadership skills, you know you want to pick up a tip, a strategy, something to help you make your next meeting highly effective. I’m really, really honored that you would spend your time here.

I also want to let you know that today’s episode of the Meeting Leadership podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy. Now there, you’re going to find some really terrific options for live training for you and your team, as in, coming in for sort of that half day professional development zone, really kind of soaking into just tackling meetings, meeting efficiency, connecting your meetings to the strategy, this kind of thing, and really getting a jumpstart and a spark for you and your team to go forward and really be able to absorb those skills into your organization to make every meeting better from then on. Also, you’re going to find some great online training options as well. And you can get all of that by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/academy.

When it comes to making your organization stronger overall, I think you’re going to get a lot out of today’s show, because today, we’re going to give you 10 reasons why effective meetings will grow your business. Don’t feel like you need to go and get a pen and paper right now because we’ve created a special download just for this episode so that you can get all 10 reasons in a really interesting infographic. You can actually kind of put this kind of thing up around the office. It’s so wonderful. You can get this download by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/135download, that’s /135 and then you spell out the word “download”. And with that in mind, let’s jump into reason number one.

Now, conducting more effective meetings will of course help you to improve productivity because you’re going to get more done during meetings, and that’s going to free up time for other projects. I mean, think about it, the meetings themselves, they could actually shorten. I’ve seen situations where people start to put effort into this. For example, there was a mid size accounting firm, and they went from a two hour senior leadership meeting like once a month, and they made it like 20 minutes long, and they got rid of the chairs and they did sort of tweaks here and there where everybody was really prepared before they got in the room, and they were kind of talking about it on the fly, but they had really put the effort into being concise when it was their turn to speak.

Of course, just from that example alone, we can all realize immediate cost savings from improving the productivity in our meetings, which leads us into the second reason why you want to conduct more effective meetings, and that is simply to improve profitability because you’re not going to be paying for wasted staff hours, and effective meetings are definitely where you build your most profitable products and services. So do more of the good stuff, and then make sure people have time to go outside of meetings and work on those special projects. And overall, we can already feel our profitability going way up.

The third reason, well, it’s to improve staff morale. I mean, so many people spend so much time outside of meetings complaining about meetings, but if you made them more effective, then nobody would ever have to say, “That meeting should have been an email,” ever again.

The fourth reason, well, it is absolutely critical, because if you have more effective meetings, it’s going to help you to retain your best people because they’re not going to be wasting time in unnecessary meetings. Now, I tell you, this is a crisis. If you look at any downtown set of office towers in any major city in the world, I can tell you there are people that are getting sent to 20 meetings a week, sometimes 30 meetings a week during the daytime, and it forces them to do their regular work at night. So, if you can’t go in and cut a few meetings and make those meetings more efficient, you can just look forward to watching your best talent walk out the door.

If you’re at the level where you really know that retaining your best talent is significant, then you’re going to really appreciate reason number five, because when you have more effective meetings, you can help to meet your strategic goals because when you connect every meeting directly to your organization’s strategy, then every meeting will move your vision forward, your mission forward, your goals forward. And the simplest way to do this is actually to get your vision statement out, say it at the beginning of your next meeting, have your meeting, and then at the end of the meeting, leave a bit of time and say, “Is the meeting that we just had, did it move our vision forward?” And if it was actually an hour spent talking about the gluten-free hotdog issue for the summer celebration, maybe that didn’t move the vision forward. But if you actually had a meeting where you came up with a new product or a new service and it definitely did, well, what a great investment to have a more effective meeting that’s connected and moving your strategy forward every time.

Once you’ve started to put the effort into creating better meetings, then we get to reason number six. Great meetings will give you something to brag about because you and your team, well, you can tell your colleagues, you can tell your competition and your families for that matter, that your business runs the best.

Number seven is another great reason to have more effective meetings, because if you do, you’re going to save time at night. Because think about it, you’re not going to actually have to complain to your spouse about lousy daytime meetings. You know all that time we lose when we get home and like, “Ah, I’m so frustrated. That meeting was terrible,” and this and that? If the meeting went well, you won’t have to do that. It’ll save you a lot of personal time.

When you realize that making every meeting strategic, making every meeting productive, is really starting to pay off, you get into reason number eight, and that’s that effective meetings are going to help you to innovate, because when you develop an effective meetings culture, your employees will be free to express themselves and be able to act upon their best ideas because those effective meetings will set up a real place of trust, places where they can push the boundaries, places where they can really do their best with each other.

When that starts to happen, then we get into reason number nine. You’re going to laugh more often when you have effective meetings because the meetings are just going to be a lot more fun.

The final reason to do this, well, is to get inspired because the positive results of effective meetings are going to encourage you to do even more, to serve your colleagues, serve your clients and your community at the highest possible level.

Now let me take a moment to summarize the 10 reasons why effective meetings will grow your business. Number one, they’re going to improve productivity. Number two, they’re going to improve profitability. Number three, they’re going to improve staff morale. Number four, they’re also going to help you retain your best people. Number five, they’re going to help you actually meet and exceed your strategic goals, vision, and mission. And number six, they’re definitely going to give you something to brag about. Number seven, they’re going to save you some time at night because you won’t be wasting personal time on complaining about bad meetings in the daytime. Number eight, they’re going to help you to innovate. And number nine, they’re going to help you to laugh more often because the meetings are going to be a lot more fun. And finally, number 10, highly effective meetings are going to help you and your team to get inspired.

When you hear all those great reasons, you have to ask yourself, what are we waiting for? Now is the time to grow your MROI, your meeting return on investment, by learning how to conduct highly effective meetings today. And like I mentioned at the top of the show, we’ve got a great download for this episode. It’s called 10 Reasons Why Effective Meetings Will Grow Your Business, and it’s available at meetingleadershipinc.com/135download.

If you’ve enjoyed listening to this episode, I think you’re going to get a lot out of episode two on the Meeting Leadership podcast. It’s called How To Connect Your Meetings To Your Strategy, and you can get that episode by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/2. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I highly recommend that you visit the Meeting Leadership Academy. Now there, you’ve got great live training options and online training options to help you and your team learn how to run great meetings, build your leadership skills, and a whole lot more. And you can get that by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/academy.

If you are a leader whose head is going to pop off from all the distractions that you’re getting in like hour in hour, out where it’s like emails, and texts, and other things going on, all that kind of thing, you’re going to get a lot out of episode 136 coming up next on the Meeting Leadership podcast. Now it’s called Why Leaders Need To Slow Down, Think Creatively, And Make Better Decisions, and that’s with guest expert Dan Pontefract. I can tell you, it’s a great interview and it’s going to allow you to get that breathing room into your brain that you need to become a high performing leader. You can listen to that episode by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/136.

For everyone who is already a subscriber, I hope you’re getting a lot out of the show and I really appreciate that you’re there. And for anybody who’s not, please take a moment to hit the subscribe button and maybe even leave a rating and review that we can read out on the show and actually get feedback to help things move forward in a highly effective way. And as always, thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next time on the Meeting Leadership podcast.

Thanks for listening to the Meeting Leadership podcast. Be sure to subscribe for more strategies that will help you become an outstanding leader, and don’t forget to rate and review so we can bring you even more great content. We’ll see you next time right here on the Meeting leadership podcast.