I recently wrote an article with meeting tips for the blog of Parabol, an agile meeting tool for remote teams.

When I started on the piece, I didn't expect to find novel suggestions. But out of the 29 tips that made the final article, four were new to me.

1️⃣ Consider what happens if you don’t meet. Simply ask what happens if you don't meet at all? Will there be consequences, or can you skip the meeting or cover it with an email or instant message?

2️⃣ Use 1-2-4-All to structure group discussions. You first brainstorm some ideas alone, then discuss those in pairs. From there, you select the best ideas in a group of four, and then those are put to the entire group for further discussion.

3️⃣ Make preparation mandatory for participation. This advice sounds obvious, but the point is to truly enforce it: if you haven’t prepared for an agenda item, you forfeit your right to contribute to that topic.

4️⃣ Calculate the Return on Meeting (RoM). Every meeting costs money. Yet even a junior person who needs several approvals for a $50 expense can call a meeting with many others without scrutiny. (The full article below includes a link to a handy live meeting cost calculator.

These are just four of the tips that surprised me. Head over to the complete article on the Parabol blog to check out all 29 tips.

👉️ Read 29 Effective Meeting Tips for Advanced Facilitators on Parabol's blog