A Harvard Business Review reports on a survey that was conducted with 100 senior managers to get their thoughts on the productivity of team meetings.

  • 71% described them as “unproductive and inefficient”
  • 65% said they hinder workflow
  • 64% agreed they come at the cost of deep thinking
  • 62% said they missed the chance to unite the team

Would you agree?

Do team meetings need to be improved? 

Would you describe them as “unproductive and inefficient”?  

Even though you are a well-intentioned project manager, the sound of you calling someone into a team meeting might sound like rocks landing on a tin roof. Some may even react like Pam Beasley in this scene from The Office.

Here are five tips for conducting effective medical writing team meetings.

  1. Create an Agenda

Let’s put on our white hats. Before inviting your team to a meeting, you generally need to answer five questions:

  1. What is the purpose of this meeting?
  2. What should the attendees prepare?
  3. Where will this meeting be held? 
  4. When will the meeting be held? 
  5. What time does it start and end?

Here’s an action tip💡– Create an agenda using a document that can be shared with your team — Then you can add it to a calendar. I schedule the meeting in Google Calendar, and it automatically includes an option for notes. You can put the agenda there or make a separate document. Click here to see an agenda format. Feel free to use it!

This action tip sets you up for tip number two.

2. Create Anticipation

Before a movie hits theaters, the production company drops a teaser, and as the film comes closer to release, one to three different trailers become available. What is the goal? — to create anticipation for the viewers. While a team meeting for medical writers isn’t a movie, creating suspense is vital to running better team meetings for writers.

You have dropped the trailer by creating an agenda. But here are some additional suggestions to ensure attendance and participation. 

  • Have meetings on Tuesdays – Better Meetings reports that a survey conducted with 757 workers showed 47% of them felt that Monday was the worst day to hold a meeting, whereas 29% said the best time is Tuesday at 2:30 p.m.
  • Send a personal note – One or two hours before the meeting, reach out to invitees and confirm their attendance. Let them know you need them there because the team could benefit from their opinion or expertise on a particular subject. It makes them feel special!
  • Offer refreshments – If the meeting will be held in person, letting everyone know in the agenda that donuts and coffee will be served is a great incentive for getting them through the door.

These three suggestions create anticipation, resulting in better team meetings for medical writers.

3. Create Synergy

Freelance medical writers spend much time isolated. Therefore, it is often hard for them to feel like they are part of a team. To combat that, you need to create synergy from the start of the meeting. The best way to do that is by engaging in a brief group activity.

I will offer some group activity suggestions in an upcoming blog, but here is an idea to get you started.

  • Celebrate gossip:  People absorb gossip like hummingbirds to nectar. If there was a recent victory, big or small, lead with that. Has a team member completed an NIH grant application and now has insights for the team? Use that to boost them up. Is a world event a hot topic in the office? Ask everyone to share their opinion briefly and then redirect the convo to the purpose of the meeting.

I find it helpful to start with a high-spirited phrase like “You aren’t going to believe it!”, “I can’t wait to tell you guys the good news!” or “Did you all hear what happened?”. 

4. Moderate but Don’t Monopolise

There’s nothing worse than being in a meeting where the chair has to be the bride at the wedding and the corpse at the funeral. As a stakeholder or medical consultant on a project, you may know the ins and outs of a project, but monopolizing team meetings will push more people out than in.

Learn to moderate team meetings. How? Guide the discussion by sticking to the agenda and ensuring that the stakeholders speak more than you. 

Develop the habit of presenting the idea, then let the stakeholders comment on the idea, summarize the decision, and create the action steps to execute it.

Let your words be the icing on the cake, not the cake.

5. End on a High Note

You’ve created the agenda and the synergy to hold an effective meeting for medical writers, and you’re moderating it like a boss, but now the time has come to end it. But how do you conclude? End on a high note. What does that mean?

Don’t stretch the meeting so much that team members are on the edge of their seats to leave. End the meeting at a point where morale is high, and stakeholders feel excited about following through on what’s been discussed.

As chair of the meeting, you must keep your white hat on. Ensure each point in the agenda is covered. Once it has been covered, immediately go to the next point and avoid frivolous crosstalk. However, at the beginning and at the end, leave a little room for laughter and words of commendation so that the team looks forward to the next meeting.

The Harvard Business Review recommends you don’t end a team meeting without doing these three things:

  1. Confirm key decisions and next steps
  2. Develop communication points
  3. Gather session feedback

Whether the team meeting is about creating web content for a medical corporation, preparing social media content, or creating slide decks for an upcoming healthcare conference, conclude when the team meeting has reached an interest-arousing climax.

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