The Association Blog

Go ahead, we dare you—ask the folks who attend your next meeting if it was worth their time

The folks behind Radical Candor, a communication framework for offering specific and sincere praise and kind and clear criticism, speak about designing a meeting as if you’re designing a product: “Arguably the most important product your company makes,” they say, “since it’s where decisions actually get made.”

One of our favorite of the seven principles of meeting design puts your team in the driver’s seat. After one in every ten or so meetings you host, ask those who attended to rate, on a scale of zero to five, if it was worth their time, and what you could have done to make the meeting more useful and effective.

While meetings tend to be rated most effective by the meeting host and the person who talked the most, what about everyone else? What happens, when you look through your meeting planner lens, when you design a meeting for everyone in the room rather than, ahem, yourself?

Let us know if you plan to explore this, or if you’ve tried something similar.

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Photo: The Jopwell Collection