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How To Lead Effective Meetings

How o lead effective meetings

TL;DR:
Unproductive meetings are a hidden cost in business. The 10-step Meeting Leadership Solution helps leaders create meetings that inspire action, improve communication, and connect directly to strategy. From better agendas to smarter follow-up, this system turns meetings into a real advantage.

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Have you ever said, “That meeting should have been an email instead of a meeting!”

We all know that unproductive meetings are bad for business.

U.S. businesses waste up to $259 billion every year on unproductive meetings, with 35% of meetings failing to deliver value.

What would happen if you could improve your meetings, and turn them into a competitive advantage for your company?

The Meeting Leadership Solution

The Meeting Leadership Solution 10-Step System will help you and your leadership team gain the skills and confidence they need to run highly effective meetings.

In addition, they will also learn:

  • How to calculate the actual cost of a meeting
  • How to become an outstanding facilitator
  • How to build an effective agenda
  • How to fight…so you can really get along
  • How to connect every meeting to your strategy
  • How to follow up FAST and be more accountable
  • How to get inspired and take action!

Based on the book by Gordon Sheppard titled the ‘Meeting Leadership Solution’, the 10 steps include:

Step 1: Get Real With Yourself

If you want to run an effective meeting, then you must be self-aware.

With that in mind, Step 1 will help you answer questions like:

  • Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
  • Do you have a mentor who can help you understand yourself at a deeper level?
  • Have you taken a personality test (like a DiSC® Assessment offered by X5 Management)?

The DiSC®  Assessment is a key stepping stone to effective communication. Learn more about it here!

Step 2: Get Real With Your Team

In this step, you’ll find practical ways to build trust with your meeting team.

For example, you’ll learn the impactful ‘repetition’ listening technique.

This happens when you listen to a colleague’s statement and then summarize and repeat what you’ve heard.

When you do this, your colleague feels acknowledged, and you will improve overall communication.

Step 3: Know Your Total Meeting Cost

How much are you spending per hour to meet with your team?

In this step you’ll learn a simple but powerful calculation that will help you understand how much money you could be wasting in poorly run meetings.

Step 4: Get A Great Facilitator

Having a title doesn’t mean you know how to run an effective meeting.

In Step 4, you’ll find out how to rate your current meeting facilitator, and then you’ll be given techniques to help them improve.

For example, every meeting facilitator should know how to manage a conflict between two people. One of the best ways to do this is by establishing ‘ground rules’ before you actually get started. Ground rules could include:

  • Only one person speaks at a time
  • Anything said will be about the issue and remain professional, not personal

Step 5: Link The Meeting To Your Strategy

What would happen if you could connect every meeting directly to your organization strategy?

In Step 5, you’ll explore how to extract the most important aspects of your strategic plan and apply them to every meeting that takes place in your company.

Step 6: Build A Blockbuster AGENDA

In Step 6, you’ll learn how to use the word AGENDA as a helpful acronym to improve your meeting agendas. AGENDA stands for

  • A – Attention Grabber
  • G – Great Goals
  • E – Excitement
  • N – Navigation Tools
  • D – Decide Now
  • A – Accountability Check-In

Step 7: Meet In The Right Space

Whether it’s in person or online, where you meet matters as much as what you are meeting about. So, Step 7 will help you consider everything you need to create an exceptional meeting space that inspires your team to achieve greatness during meetings.

Step 8: Get Awesome Meeting Resources

No two meetings are the same. What worked for you last time may not work for you again.

To help you adapt, in Step 8 you’ll find a variety of resources to help you improve your meetings. From insightful book titles to informative article links, you’ll get the information and inspiration you need to help you make your next meeting exceptional.

Step 9: Follow-Up FAST

If you want your team to be more accountable after every meeting, then you’ll want to learn the FAST acronym in Step 9. FAST stands for:

F – Feedback Loop
A – Astonish Each Other
S – Standardize the Follow Up Process
T – Track Progress

Step 10: Get Inspired And Take Action!

In this step, we’ll help you to figure out how to get inspired so you can take action and immediately improve your overall meeting culture.

Transform Your Meetings into a Competitive Advantage
At X5 Management, we help organizations stop wasting time in unproductive meetings and start using them to drive real results.

Through customized training, facilitation support, and tools like the DiSC® Assessment, we equip leaders and teams to:

  • Run focused, efficient meetings

  • Build stronger communication habits

  • Link meetings directly to business strategy

  • Follow through with accountability

Let’s help your team get more done—with fewer meetings.


Book your complimentary Discovery Meeting today at x5management.com.

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