Sonali Malu’s ruthless rules for productive meetings help us get the best out of our meetings. The emphasis is on the positive. Project managers are responsible for constant communication with their clients, peers, teams, stakeholders, and supporting departments. Project managers communicate with everyone. They give advice, provide directions, negotiate, promise deliverables, etc. Meetings are an essential part of any project manager’s communication plan. It would be easy to assume that everyone is proficient in facilitating and planning meetings. However, many of us have attended unsuccessful meetings. These are just a few examples of professional misbehaviors.

• An important meeting is scheduled for a feature discussion and estimation. After the meeting, you are expected to submit an estimate for the feature to management. Two of your senior team members have been contacted by a technical architect to do some proposal work. These team members are not allowed to attend your meeting.
• * Participants in a meeting speak in their local language, which is not the official way of communicating. You will receive a summary of the meeting in two lines at the end.
• * A senior manager suddenly interrupts your meeting and asks questions to participants in order to create an important data presentation for the board meeting. Your agenda is completely ignored.
• * A meeting that was prearranged must be postponed if a senior stakeholder is not able to attend.

Many of you have dealt with situations like this, and many of these challenging behaviors are still present in your meetings. What can you do as a project manager? Be ruthless! These eight rules will ensure that productive meetings are productive and you take back your meetings.

Participants should be prepared. Send your attendees documents, links, and other information ahead of time. Let them know that you expect them ready to tackle the topic(s). You have a plan and an itinerary for how you will use everyone’s time.

Interrupt people who get off-topic. It is perfectly acceptable to intervene and stop a discussion from going off-topic.

Invitees must respond with a definitive “yes” or “no” answer. This should be a requirement for professionals to accept or reject the invitation. It is not professional to inform the meeting organizer of your availability to attend a meeting.

Be careful when choosing your participants. Make sure everyone is able to share their knowledge, offer views, and highlight potential risks. As needed, involve the appropriate subject matter experts (SME). You should not invite too many people or people who are not contributing to the agenda items.

Take a break. Sometimes a discussion can turn into a heated argument, or take a wrong turn. It is a good idea to take a break for just 2 minutes. These 2 minutes will ensure that everyone is able to go through the agenda again with an eye on where we are, what we need to do, and how we can get back on track.

Allow participants to leave. Participants may leave if they don’t want to continue the discussion or have no points to share. So long as they have completed their agenda items.

Avoid dependence on one resource. Don’t depend on one person to make decisions. Dependency on one person can cause the whole project to stop. This might not be possible in smaller organizations. It is important to identify and know people you can trust for judgment and decision making. It is always beneficial to send minutes of meetings in such cases.

Develop an engaging strategy. Sometimes, a topic is so vast that it takes 2-3 sessions to brainstorm ideas.