Meeting Your Team's Needs and Expectations
Feb 03, 2025 02:38PM ● By Janet Lewis Matricciani
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Once upon a time, I joined a company as the new COO. I threw myself into learning about the business, which was tricky as it was in a complex industry segment with a ton of arcane rules, many of which helped neither the consumer nor the companies in that space.
Fortunately for me, the CEO was very interested in my opinions. After every executive meeting, even in the first week, he would ask to meet me afterwards in his office and then ask me what I thought of the meeting. I felt awkward because my colleagues had worked with him in many businesses for over 20 years, and I was the newbie being pulled aside to give my views.
Nevertheless, I tried to give some helpful thoughts around what worked and what didn’t, for which he seemed grateful. I did not understand the purpose of each executive team meeting, the desired results, or how long the meeting was meant to last as they often overran the calendar period. I had even less of an understanding of whether the meeting had been a success. There was no pre-meeting agenda bar the title of the meeting, no structure bar someone talking about their business, no key issues list, and no action items coming out of the meeting.
The worst was the once-a-month three-day meeting, where each executive went through their business unit. There was no feedback given and no questions asked. No one was engaged in the presentations (which were the same every month from each executive, just with updated numbers). The non-presenters had their computers out with screens up, and were openly sending and receiving emails, corresponding with their team in their business unit.
It was worst for me as I had only just joined the company right before the first meeting so I did not have enough incoming emails to keep me busy, and so I just sat there, slowly dying of boredom. The pages and pages of numbers were overwhelming and delivered at a fast pace so even if I tried to follow along, I was soon lost.
A junior person was called on each month to give a presentation. The executives continued to email during these presentations although when the employee finished presenting, they all clapped loudly and gave profuse thanks. For me, this was the last straw. When the CEO called me into his office at the end of the third day and asked me what I thought, I could not hold back any longer. “What’s the point?” I began. “What’s the point of these three days of meetings? No one is paying attention, there is almost no interaction between executives, and when that associate gave their presentation, no one, not even you, was listening!”
“Well, we like to give junior employees a chance to present to senior ones,” he said sheepishly.
“Then give them something to talk about that interests you,” I told him, “So you don’t have to fake interest while not listening, which means the presenter learns nothing and surely cannot feel valued.”
When the CEO then said to the team, “I don’t want you to be using your computers and doing other tasks during these meetings, as it is distracting and means you are not fully engaged,” his team reasonably responded that with three days away from their team in a row, they could not manage their department successfully without staying in contact during the day. I am sure this was true, but it was also clear that the meeting content held no value for them or they would have been listening and querying the presenter.
In contrast, at another company where I was CEO, we made a small team of cross-department junior employees and had them research our competitors using public information. Obviously, they could not get full or perfect data with which to analyze the competition, but they did a great job and we always learned a lot.
The research team presented to the executive team once a month, describing what they had learned and sharing their thoughts on how we could do better and increase our competitive advantage. Since all the executives wanted to know this, the meetings were engaging and interactive. I always explained upfront, “You are going to get a lot of questions but we don’t expect you to have all the answers, so don’t worry.” At the end of the meeting, we had a list of follow-up action items to both complete our learning and to improve our business. This structure also allowed our junior associates to build relationships with each other across departments, thus increasing collaboration within the company even outside of this project work.
In order to have a successful meeting, you need to start with one rule: “Meetings start and end on time.” I bring this mantra into every company where I work. You cannot know whether your colleagues have a doctor’s appointment, a need to pick up kids after school, or another meeting for which 30 people will be waiting for them unproductively if they are late. It is not fair on others to run over the time allocated, or to be late for a meeting. Treating others with care and respect is, of course, a critical component of having a culture that creates lasting success.
When I was at a major bank, my team had a meeting with the co-founders on Halloween. The meeting was meant to start at 1 p.m. and last 30 minutes. I was glad about that as my 18-month-old son had a costume parade at his daycare at 4 p.m., and I definitely did not want to miss it. We waited for 2½ hours outside the office of the CEO, along with many other colleagues, waiting for their own separate meetings with the CEO. Our meeting only started at 4 p.m. It ended an hour later.
It was a successful meeting in the eyes of the CEO and my boss, but not for me. I missed my kid’s first parade. Throughout the meeting, the executive assistant of the CEO came in with papers for him to sign on other matters, disrupting any conversation or flow of thought. She had clearly been told she needed to do this, and everyone was used to it. I know the CEO’s excuse would be, “Look I am so busy, I can’t know how long our meetings are going on, and I just need that queue of people waiting outside the door so I can use my time efficiently. We have investors to meet, bankers, regulators, our lives are complex.”
But I, too, ran a public company (albeit smaller), and I still started and ended meetings on time. If more time was clearly going to be needed, five minutes before the end of the meeting, I asked everyone to look at their calendars so we could jointly schedule another hour or whatever else was needed. If you can’t manage all your meetings without frequent interruptions, you need to have fewer meetings with better focus, and you need to delegate more.
However, starting and ending on time is not enough to secure a successful meeting. There also needs to be a time limit. No one can concentrate for three hours in a row. My personal limit is two hours, and I can only do that if the meeting has two separate components with a break in between. For offsites, a daylong structure cannot be presentation after presentation. The human brain cannot cope. Attendees will lose focus and also become exhausted from too much unabsorbable information. I prefer an hour maximum per meeting, and offsites that intersperse learning games and have frequent breaks and variations in meeting structure throughout the day.
It’s not enough just to say, “Get up and stretch” every hour, as some business leaders seem to do. People need more than a stretch or bathroom break to stay focused and participative.
If you are the CEO or department head and think something is urgent, you simply have to avoid going round the office and calling your key “generals” into your office, yanking them out of meetings in midflow. Nothing is really that urgent that it can’t wait a few hours, until you can find gaps in the schedule or your team has time to reorganize their afternoon if truly (and rarely is it truly) necessary. The only exception to this rule is if the building is on fire. Yank them out! Yank everyone out! Stop, drop, and roll, and exit safely.
But there is still more to a successful meeting than this. Everyone needs to have an agenda in advance and, often, short preparatory reading. If you are the presenter and don’t have time to do this, then you don’t have time to have the meeting itself.
I always told my team; “Meetings are only as good as the prework beforehand, the agenda used, the contents of the discussion, and the follow up of the action items list after the meeting.”
For annual meetings with employees, this is even more critical. This is your one chance a year to get everyone on the same page, to explain the vision for the next year, to celebrate successes of the current year, and build full company alignment around key strategic initiatives. Each year, I would begin by rating our success of the previous year and explaining, if we had failed at an initiative, why we had not succeeded. This transparency built trust between more junior employees and the executive team. It also helps if you have a couple of funny self-deprecating comments because laughter brings people back into concentrating if they are drifting and jolts even the sleepers awake.
We also solicited feedback from every employee after that meeting using the “Stop, Start, Keep” formula that works so well. What should we stop doing that is not working? What would you like to see us start doing? What should we keep doing? This last question is as important as the other two because if you don’t ask it, you risk dropping some activity or content that everyone is enjoying and appreciating. In response, we found we needed to cover more topics but in less depth, and to have more breakout activities, and I personally needed to speak more slowly. Very helpful!
In meetings, it is also important to understand the character and past experience of those attending. One time, we had a meeting of my small business unit to discuss new opportunities. Everyone gave opinions except one woman who had newly joined the team. We chose two paths on which to move forward, and created an Action Items List with Responsible Parties and Completion Dates attached to each list as always. Afterwards, Rose came into my office. She expressed concerns with one of the paths chosen and showed me some data she had analyzed that showed it was much riskier than we thought.
“Rose, this is brilliant!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t you say that in the meeting? Now I have to gather everyone back together so we get group feedback and then buy-in to not going down the other path if yours is the best answer.”
“Janet, I have only been in the U.S. for a month,” she explained. “My English is not that good and, in my culture, we stay silent when our superiors are having a discussion.”
Even though I then understood her perspective, I knew it would not work if I wanted to have a collaborative dynamic team that would fundamentally change and grow our stagnant business unit successfully. We discussed a solution that could work for her and achieve this. We decided that I would ensure she had some extra details about the conversation topics in advance, and that I would always back her up when she spoke up so she felt comfortable. This did not mean that I would agree with her but, rather, that I would ensure her voice was heard and that, in the meeting, I would thank her for the idea or comment and ask to learn more.
Suddenly, Rose was viewed as an integral part of what was an all-male team. Her brilliant analytics were sought out by other team members outside of the meetings to solve complex issues. It was wonderful to see her grow and shine. She’s now a managing director at a prominent bank, and we are still in touch.
Years ago, when I was consulting to a large telecom company, the employees valued themselves based on the number of meetings they were attending each week. This was a complete anathema to me.
“I have 14 meetings this week,” I would hear as I walked down a corridor.
“Oh, I have 33,” came the proud response.
“How do you get any work done if you are just in meetings all the time?” I wanted to butt in and ask.
We even had one employee show up to our meetings with the business unit president. None of us had any idea who she was or why she was there. We asked the president. He was as clueless as we were. I guess it added to her meeting tally, and therefore she judged it a success.
Culture starts with the executive and moves downward. If you want an efficient, effective workplace, you have to use the time of others wisely. Meetings are precious time that take away other work time from multiple people for the same period. Ideally, the CEO embodies this belief but if not, you will just have to make it happen yourself within your own pyramid. Prepare in advance, use the time wisely, get a list of action steps and make sure they happen. Check that list for progress at the beginning of the next meeting. Your colleagues will value you all the more for this and you will build trust.
And as for the company with three-day executive business review meetings every month (that being 15 percent of all business days), after I spoke to the CEO, the structure was completely changed. Now, executives had to present on key issues they were solving and ask for collaborative ideas. Only two pages were allowed on business results, and only if the problem areas were highlighted. Then a group discussion on the issues began. The EA took notes of the resultant action items decided. The length was reduced to one full business day and computer use was only allowed in the breaks.
When I left, I received a short text from one of the business unit heads: “Thanks for reducing the meetings, I will be forever grateful.” I wondered why he, a good friend of the CEO for 30 years, had not had the courage to say something earlier himself. Well, I guess that’s my legacy.
Janet Lewis Matricciani is a two-time CEO who has worked all over the world and is multilingual, now sharing her business lessons publicly. She can be reached at [email protected]