Ineffective meetings and poor decision-making processes can be one of the biggest barriers to team productivity. This case study shows how Team GROW® and the InsideOut Development Coaching process help teams improve meeting effectiveness, decision-making, ownership, and follow-through.
- Dealing with disagreement and conflict. We live in a current culture of 24/7 information flow. This increases the difficulty factor around having civil, yet professionally focused conversations.
- The lack of ongoing, clear communication. With all the technological advancements over the last 10 years we live in a world of consistent information flow. It is too easy to mistake shared data with shared vision.
- Ineffective meetings and the lack of a strong decision making process. The result of the previous 2 issues, this is what I will address in the rest of the article.
To prove my point, write down how many meetings you’ve had in the last 30 days. Now, what percentage of those meetings was absolutely worth your time? When I direct this question to leaders, 30-75% of their meetings were a waste of time.
Why it is Critical to Have Effective Meetings
The Volume of Meetings
According to a Hubstaff 2026 Global Trends and Benchmarks report, the typical employee participates in 25 meetings a month.
Meetings Are Sneaky Expensive
According to another Archie summary of the latest meeting statistics roughly 35% of meetings are considered a waste of time. These meetings cost businesses an average of $29,000 per employee per year, not including the extra hours, spent on scheduling.
Low Engagement in Those Meetings
The same Archie study shows that 73% of participants multitask during meetings, which often signals low engagement or relevance.
The Framework for Effective Meetings
I believe that applying a team coaching approach, powered by the GROW® Coaching process, can help you dramatically decrease that wasted time. This returns energy and money back to yoru organization while increasing the speed and effectiveness of team decision making with higher levels of engagement!
Proof In Action
They had met multiple times over a six month period and made very little progress.
Their challenge was a lack of consensus. This lack of concurrence provided only random solutions and little ownership or accountability by the team to identify a solution. But it wasn’t for lack of experience or knowledge. The team was a high functioning group that agreed on the importance of “doing something,” but they were stuck.
The leadership team was hearing feedback from employees that their team had good intentions but were saying “show me the money”.
I recommended we apply the GROW problem-solving framework to the problem. Here are the steps I proposed to address their struggle.
Step 1
The Leadership team must agree on a clear, specific Goal. What are they trying to accomplish? Eventually they agreed to walk away with “A list of the top with 3 ideas that the leadership team could take action on within the next 30 days.”
Step 2
Establish criteria that all ideas must meet: (I recommend 3-5 criteria but no more).
- Able to implement actions within 30 days
- Falls within an agreed-upon budget
- The leadership team can agree to support actions going forward
- Every team member would be accountable for implementation
Step 3
Create a meeting cadence, a specific process, clear agendas, and team agreements & materials.
The team agreed to three, 4-hour meetings over a two-week time frame. Together we created meeting agendas for the 3 sessions that included a customized Team GROW worksheet (created by me) that allowed each participant to take notes from the discussions throughout the three meetings.
Team agreements included full agreement on the Goal and the Way forward.
All perspectives are welcome in the Reality and Options phases.
For Reality and Options, creating a safe space for all ideas and perspectives to be shared is key! Reality is a way to air out what everyone’s thinking with no judgment evaluation and Options focuses on creating a list of ideas. Quantity, not quality.
Step 4
Meeting #1 worked through the “Reality” phase of GROW for the first half of the meeting. We then brainstormed a list of options based on the criteria for the second half of the meeting.
I customized the Reality and Options questions for the worksheet and used a variety of facilitation techniques to assure that each team member had the opportunity to share their perspective and ALL their ideas.
The first half day resulted in the team creating 37 ideas! They were a bit surprised at how many ideas they were able to generate in an hour and 45 minutes.
Step 5
Prep for Meeting #2. One participant volunteered to capture and summarize the Reality comments and a list of all the Options. The volunteer committed to send out the summary and the list of all the ideas within two days. Once they received the list of ideas, they were to identify their top five ideas (each team member was allotted five votes), based on the criteria, and send them to me. I tabulated the votes and sent the Top 5 to the team, to review before the next meeting.
The agenda for the next meeting would be to work through the Way Forward for the top 2 ideas. Once they had experienced how to work toward next-step-actions, the team would be able to work through the other solutions themselves.
Step 6
Follow Up and Check In. Meeting #3 was an accountability step where the team would work through the Way Forward, identify obstacles to implementation and commit to next steps. Before dismissing the team, I used the GROW Feedback questions to debrief their experience. Below is a summary of what I heard.
Feedback and Benefits of using GROW Coaching Team Problem Solving Process
- The team accomplished more in three weeks and three meetings then they had in the previous three months.
- By the end of the third session, team members were implementing and executing on actions they committed to in the meeting.
- The team decided, after the entire process, to communicate to the organization where they had been, what they had done and where they were going. This closed the communication loop on the project.
- During the debrief, the leadership team said this was one of the best sets of meetings I’ve ever had. They felt as though they all had a chance to give in input, that they were heard, and it come to consensus on a practical and realistic implementation plan moving forward.
The Team Coaching Powered by the GROW® process drives faster, better decision-making, action-oriented meeting outcomes with “what and when” accountability. A bonus outcome was a more connected leadership team and individual development where members learned a repeatable process they could carry forward in their personal and professional lives without the help of an outside facilitator. Less wasted time and business-focused outcomes.
That’s what I call fast, efficient and fun meetings that were worth the time invested!
