So how do you make sure you're not killing morale or job satisfaction with your meetings? You might consider hiring a specialist to educate meeting leaders on techniques for becoming more effective. More immediately, here are eight ways to help you become a more effective meeting leader.

1. Schedule only necessary meetings. Think of it at its most basic: When employees are in meetings, they are not producing work. The salary each person is being paid to be at a meeting and the amount of work that's collectively lost in the same amount of time should be considered against that meeting's importance. The purpose of a meeting is to make a decision, for example solving a problem, answering a query or selecting a vendor, says Parker. In other words, there's an outcome that requires the input of the players and those should be the only people at the meeting. "There might be a legitimate issue, but it only concerns X people; the rest [if required to attend will be] annoyed and feel they have more productive things to do."

Eva Budz, who attended Parker's training and is a senior clinical oncology research scientist at Novartis, says one good rule of thumb she uses to determine that it's time for a meeting is "when we start seeing frequent correspondence on an issue and cluttered inboxes." At that point, "we just hold a meeting to get to the heart of the problem."

2. Eliminate status meetings or reduce their frequency. A lot of meetings are just status updates, progress reports, announcements of new systems and so on, says Parker. "So each person gives their little update, and that in many cases is not a good reason to meet." The information conveyed in most meetings of the status/update variety could be communicated in other ways, for example electronically. To those who consider meetings to be a time of team bonding, Parker says, "If you want to have teambuilding have teambuilding, but let's call it that." If there's a lack of bonding there's a better way of addressing it, he says. Still, some companies may find it difficult to let go of status meetings altogether.

Such is the case at Novartis. As a clinical trial leader, Budz holds monthly update meetings during which participants from drug supply, regulatory and marketing divisions report on their specific part of the trial. She says the monthly update meeting is crucial and informative, since each group can hear and discuss what the others are doing.

If you must have status meetings, do keep in mind the overall amount of corporate meetings that employees attend and try to balance the amount with that in mind. At the very least, consider allowing them to be optional. For example, Budz says that since some participants, such as data management staff, have roles on multiple trials, about 30 percent of relevant players do not attend the status meeting any given month, but are updated with meeting minutes later.

3. Create an agenda. Creating a clear purpose for your meeting and a structure for conducting it is crucial, says Parker. You should identify the key meeting outcome you are hoping to get, or the one thing you need to get done to be able say, "Yes, that was a successful meeting." Include the objective on the agenda, so that everyone is aligned as to the meeting's purpose. Days before the meeting, solicit agenda items from meeting participants and compile them with your own. Be sure to send the agenda to all participants before the meeting.

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