What defines a good meeting?

From today I've started to work with leader of second team in my project on introducing a few improvements in their work. Of course, it will require many changes, each change needs to be accepted by whole team, we need to show them, that is worth to try, that it make sense. We need to talk, discuss and even argue. And perferct place for such an activities are meetings.

But before we will start, I need to face with one great challenge - I need to convince them, there is value with doing meetings at all. They got many bad experiences with those kind of activities, they participated in boring meetings, in meetings, that was for them just a waste of time, they doesn't like interruptors, they want to work, work efficient and they're treating almost all meetings like a break from real work.

What can I say? It's great when people want to work and doesn't like those horrible moments when they need to do something else. But we need to make improvements to work in more efficient way, we need to remove impediements to do better all things, that we want to do as best as we can. If we want to, we need to schedule a meeting to discuss all ideas and propositions of potential solutions, we need to prepare a plan and each teammate should know and accept it.
That's why all team members should participate on the meeting.

If we want to convince people that meetings aren't just a waste of their time, each meeting needs to bring value for them, needs to show them how important it was to done it. Each meeting needs to be good. And what defines good meetings?

you need to be prepare

You cannot be unprepared for the meeting. If it will happen, it's a sign for all people, that you aren't professional and, what is even worse, that you doesn't respect their time, which leads directly to disrespecting them.
You need to build trust, you need to show people that you care. That's why you always should have an agenda. It will also speed up your meetings and thanks to this it would be easier to be focus on the right topic.

Having agenda is one thing, but, what is more important, you need to know (and everyone else also) what is the purpose of the meeting. Without goal you cannot talk about conclusion. If it's impossible to create a conclusion, there is no sense to schedule a meeting.
Simple as this - if you don't know what should be discussed, you don't need any discussion.

everyone needs to know what is going on

If you are asking people to do something, to play a game or whatever else, you need to explain them, before you will start, what is the purpose of it and where should it lead us. If you won't do this, people can feel uncomfortable, like in an unsafe place, and this is definately something that we want to avoid.
Meeting room should be a place where you feel good, that's why we need to avoid any surprise, that's why everything should be transparent, clear and simple.

conclusion

No conclusion means no ending product. And without this how we can tell all team members it was well used time? How we can lie ourselves and them in that way?
Agend and meeting goal will help us to know what conclusion should be about.
Sometimes it would be longer, sometimes shorter, but it's still good idea to leave few minutes on the end of your time scheduled for a meeting, to create such a summary. You will got a proof, that it wasn't waste of time and you won't forget where you stopped last time.

no off topics

If something is really so important, that you need to share with all the others, I got no problem with that, just not right now. You can either schedule another meeting or just wait for few minutes.
No one likes neverending meetings and it would be something wrong to create one. That's why is so important to focus on time little bit :)

focus

Everyone in the room needs to be focused on particular topic. No excuses, no exceptions, you got your agenda, you got your goal and there is no place for off topic.
On the other hand, each off topic will lead us to longer meetings and this would be problematic.


And what about your feelings about meeting? Maybe you want to share your thoughts with me?