Have you ever felt frustrated after a meeting?

If so, maybe you can relate to the following situation in your company. Your meeting runs longer than planned. You are rushing out the door as the meeting finally comes to an end and are scrambling just to make it to your next appointment. Giving each other real time feedback before leaving the room isn’t even a thought in your mind. Instead, you find yourself venting to a partner or colleague about something that happened, or about something that should have happened in the meeting earlier. This is especially true after a frustrating meeting. How often does this happen in your business?

Giving each other real feedback in person at the end of each meeting is vital. While it can be uncomfortable at times, it is critical for the growth, development, and health of your team. Here are three benefits of making “feedback” a regular agenda item at the end of your meetings:

1) Saves Time: Have you even considered how much time is wasted by team members stewing or complaining about a past meeting, or dreading upcoming meetings?

2) Prevents Insanity: Do you really enjoy being frustrated by doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result? Real, open, and honest feedback is a step towards breaking the cycle and will help your meetings to continuously improve.

3) Improves Productivity: Have you ever been frustrated with the feeling that everyone is not as engaged as they could be? Sharing feedback increases individual accountability for everyone in the room.

In EOS, I teach my clients to use a simple meeting agenda, called The Level 10 Meeting. The agenda has a feedback mechanism built right in. At the end of every meeting, each team member rates the meeting on a scale from 1 to 10. Feedback is given along with the rating so the rest of the team can learn what could have been done differently that would have made the meeting better. It’s normal to have average meeting ratings well below 10 at first. As giving real and open feedback at the end of your meetings becomes more natural, an average rating of an 8 or higher will become the norm. At this point, not only will your team stop wasting time venting about frustrating meetings, they will look forward to them.

Download a free copy of the entire Level 10 Meeting agenda here.