We know there’s a meeting problem. You know there’s a meeting problem. We are on coaching call after coaching call with leaders who are navigating a schedule that is back-to-back meetings. It’s a two-sided problem because badly run meetings beget more meetings, and  too many meetings prevent people from focusing on their independent tasks. Invariably, in our coaching calls, our clients will mention the Status Update meeting as particularly bothersome, so we’ll focus there for the purposes of this article.

All too often, weekly (or monthly) status updates end up being a verbal report-out by team members to the team lead. The team members feel like the time is wasted and the information could have been better communicated in an email. The team leader struggles to get anyone to participate outside of their own report. Now that many of these calls are happening in the virtual space, it’s no wonder that everyone on these calls is multitasking and disengaged.

But what can you do? As a manager or project lead, you need to get updates from the team to make sure all the work streams are on track. How can you rethink—and hopefully reinvigorate—the status update meeting?

Let’s start with the purpose of the meeting. Although the meeting is often literally called a “Status Update” meeting, the title of the meeting isn’t necessarily the purpose of it. Most managers we talk to want to get workstream updates from their team members, but the reason they have the meeting as a team huddle is deeper: they want to encourage collaboration across the team, they want to build team rapport, they want to streamline the team communications, and they want to make themselves accessible to the team should they need any support, among other things.

It is because of these additional objectives that the status update meeting is a team meeting (as opposed to an email)… but that’s usually where the thoughtfulness ends. Whether your meeting is in-person, hybrid or virtual, if you are able to apply some intentionality to the design of these frequent meetings, you will make them more efficient, productive, and collaborative.

Here are some ways to redesign for a better status update meeting. 

Encourage pre-meeting preparation

The best thing a manager can do to keep the meeting focused on the information or conversation that requires the entire team’s presence is to encourage pre-meeting preparation. 

One way managers can do this is to set up shared documents with some questions, and ask everyone to complete it before the meeting. Questions might include:

1. What can you celebrate?

2. What is a hurdle you’re navigating right now?

3. What is an ask you have for the team?

The first question helps the team focus on the positive and note their own or celebrate their peers’ success. The second question offers insight into where leaders might need to provide support, and the third encourages team collaboration. Notice that the question, “What did you get done since last time?” isn’t on the list. There’s very little value that any team member gets from preparing this answer for themselves, or listening to the answer from others. If you need the answer to that question, but it doesn’t require collaboration or conversation, ask for the information via email.

Another advantage of creating a shared document is that it acts as a meeting artifact AND as a single source of truth for the team—both important assets when trying to drive collaboration and cohesion.

Limit update time for each team member

More often than not, we hear about team members who give an update that’s long-winded, disorganized, and way too in the weeds. If the updates or report outs are becoming too long-winded, consider using a timer and allotting each team member a brief period to share. 

One manager we worked with literally took out a stop watch and gave everyone exactly 3 minutes to deliver their update. Similar to the above tip, this tactic helps each team member focus on just the most important information AND requires they come prepared. Although it took a few tries before everyone could deliver their update in 3 minutes, the outcomes were dramatic: team members took the updates much more seriously, a sense of a shared challenge encouraged bonding, and the team had more time in the meeting to focus on value-add activities where their shared presence was an advantage. Additionally, the time spent preparing their update in this manner helped them develop a better understanding of their work streams' challenges and opportunities. As a potential side effect, you may find it possible to reduce a 1 hr meeting to 30 minutes or less and give that time to another purpose.

Put the meeting into the hands of your team members

In order for the status update meeting to be more collaborative within the team and less reliant on the direction of the manager, consider giving your team members ownership of the meeting itself. 

We worked with another manager who decided to leverage question 3 in the pre-meeting preparation (What is an ask you have for the team?) as an opportunity for each team member to own a portion of the meeting. In this case, the team was 5 people, and they met for an hour. The first 10 minutes were spent reviewing updates, and then the remainder of the meeting (another 50 minutes!) were split between each of the team members to use how they liked. The idea was to encourage each team member to leverage the collective knowledge and resources of the team in a thoughtful way. Team members would use the time for a 10-min brainstorming session, as an opportunity to get feedback on an upcoming presentation, as a moment to practice telling a story, as an opportunity to collect specific input… the list went on. The manager was surprised at how thoughtful the team members were in using the time effectively, plus it made the meeting more fun, engaging, and relevant for each of them.

Consistently ask for and apply feedback

As with any meeting or project, what used to work may not work anymore. If you’ve tried a few of these ideas already and find that the energy hasn’t improved or you notice people walk away and immediately schedule follow-up meetings, make sure you have a habit and mechanism to collect feedback from your employees.

You should be regularly asking for feedback from your team members on a variety of topics, but specifically as pertains to your recurring meetings. Consider adding a quick pulse check to the last 5 minutes of the meeting. You can keep it as simple as:

• What’s one thing that works about our status meetings?

• What’s one thing you would change?

• What else?

Challenge the idea that you should have them at all

Somewhat provocatively, we’d suggest you  consider simply eliminating the Status Update meeting from your routine. If the meeting really is just an information share-out, apply these tips and give your team their time back:

• Use a shared document to solicit brief and structured key updates, challenges and asks from the various team members.

• Review the document, check-in with team members and schedule the follow-up conversations based on that input.

Status Update meetings don’t need to be set up as a “go around the group and everyone gives their updates to the manager.” They’re boring, team members don’t find value from them, and the real value of having the entire team together gets lost. Try these ideas and see what happens. 

What else have you tried and how did it make a difference in your Status Updates?

Register for a webinar on this topic on Thursday, May 2, 2024. Ask questions, share ideas, and learn from us and each other!