What To Do When A Meeting Goes Bad

We've all been there. You're in an important meeting with decision makers and nothing is going right. The calendar event didn't save your agenda, someone is running 10 minutes late, and you've only got 30 minutes to get through a month's worth of progress updates. Bad meetings like these are what funny SNL skits are made of. And while we want to continue to be entertained with all-too-accurate depictions of workplace fails on Saturday nights, we don't actually want these things to happen IRL.

Unfortunately, it's not always in our control to stop a meeting from going south. But there are some great tactics and strategies for reviving the meeting after things take a negative turn. Let's take a look at a few of the common problems that cause meeting dysfunction, and a few of our favorite solutions.

Problem: You're way off topic.

You've veered way off topic and only have ten minutes left in your meeting. Nothing has been accomplished. This is a nightmare situation for those of us that are in back-to-back meetings all day and need to get work done in the meeting.

Solution: Set a small talk time limit.

Spend no more than 10% of the meeting veering off topic. Sure, it's great to check in and see how everyone is doing, but if your meeting is 30 minutes long, you shouldn't be spending more than three minutes at the start of the meeting on small talk. If you let the casual conversation go unchecked, you could spend the entire first half of your meeting talking about things that are personally relevant, but not professionally. This is disruptive for everyone.

Problem: