As an exhibit manager, I host a lot of meetings with our marketing, sales, and management teams. But I sense that participants actually dread these meetings and find them ineffective. Where am I going wrong, and how can I correct things?

First, kudos to you for acknowledging the potential issue. The majority of meeting hosts never admit that perhaps their meetings aren't effective, or (gasp) necessary. However, according to a report from Atlassian Pty. Ltd., a provider of collaboration-related software, U.S. businesses waste $37 billion a year as a result of ineffective meetings. So how do you make sure your meetings are as effective as possible and that you're using participants' time wisely? You check to see if your meetings are committing any of these seven deadly sins, and when necessary, you eradicate them.

1: Your meetings ramble on without a purpose, or no one follows the agenda.
In a recent poll of 471 management leaders, 90 percent of them attributed the failure of most meetings to the host's lack of planning. So before you take up other people's time, make sure you know how you're going to spend each precious minute. The best way to do that is to create an agenda that details what topics you want to discuss and how much time you want to spend on each. Before the meeting, send the written agenda to all participants. Then, review your agenda at the beginning of your meeting and insist that everyone (including you) follow it.

Empower people to politely point out when the meeting veers off track; that way everyone can share the responsibility to keep things moving. More likely than not, participants will be more interested in and committed to a meeting with clear organization, structure, and specific start and end points – and more respectful of a host who in turn respects their time.

2: Participants are multitasking or talking amongst themselves.
People tend to multitask and chit-chat when they're not engaged with the conversation, and simply having an agenda and some structure in the meeting will alleviate much of this. However, you may also have to establish some ground rules, such as requiring people to listen without interrupting, insisting that all conversations are held with the entire group and not just between a couple of participants, and setting limits on texts, emails, and phone conversations.

Write down your meeting rules and attach them to the agenda you send prior to the meeting. Also quickly go over the ground rules at the beginning of the meeting as a brief reminder. Once again, encourage participants to politely reprimand each other if anyone breaks the rules.

3: Participants arrive unprepared.
To hold people accountable for their assigned tasks, you need to first ensure that all participants know what's expected of them prior to the meeting. Thus, when you create the agenda, include notes about any contributions (e.g., reports, opinions, research, etc.) that you're expecting from specific participants. Also include an explanation of any tasks you'd like participants to perform prior to arrival, such as reviewing the past meeting's notes, compiling budget figures, developing their own suggestions for ways to meet a specific challenge, etc. Unless you're holding a brainstorming session, your meeting should be about idea sharing and analysis, not idea generation.

By simply stating expectations and reminding people of their assigned tasks, you'll prompt most participants to come to your meetings prepared. If you've got a Lazy Lou or LuAnn in your midst, discuss the issue privately and point out that a lack of preparedness wastes time. If the problem still persists, implement consequences if you are in a position to do so, or talk to the wrongdoer's supervisor and ask for help in resolving the matter.

4: Final decisions are rarely made.
The purpose of many meetings is to make a decision about something. But if you're regularly unable to make a collective decision, and participants are unwilling to compromise or simply agree to disagree – or worse yet, the group makes a decision but meeting participants continue to question and revisit it months down the road – your meetings are little more than a mental and emotional beat down. So create the expectation that a decision will be made during the meeting (or over the course of two or three meetings tops), and drive for consensus.

If a decision still can't be made, kick the topic upstairs to upper management or assign it to a sub-group of some sort so its members can reach a consensus for the larger group. Remember, not everyone will agree on all topics or decisions, but you can't force participants to continually beat their heads against the wall on the same topic because of an inability to reach consensus.

5: Some participants dominate the meeting, but others contribute little.
All meetings should have some type of facilitator, which doesn't necessarily have to be the host. That is, the host moves the meeting along according to the agenda, but the facilitator ensures that everyone has a chance to speak, and may even coax opinions out of shy participants and try to "take the mic" from the more talkative ones. If you can't act as both host and facilitator, enlist a regular participant to facilitate for you.

6: Participants come late or leave early.
Timeliness and commitment are matters of integrity. Consider the steel beams in a building. If one were missing or askew, the entire structure would sag. Similarly, the integrity of your team is undermined when key people are absent, as they will inevitably miss important information and ultimately waste everyone else's time when they have to be brought up to date later. So schedule your meetings as far in advance as possible so participants can block out the necessary time on their calendars. Then reiterate the importance of timeliness and commitment in your written premeeting communications and at the start of each meeting. And always start and end the meeting on time, for if you make it a habit to respect participants' schedules, they will be more likely to respect yours as well.

7: People leave meetings tired or angry.
If you've already fixed the above problems – you have an agenda, start and end on time, make concrete decisions, etc. – the structure of your meeting, its timing, and even the snacks you serve could all be eliciting negative emotions among participants. If your meetings include donuts, soft drinks, candy, or coffee, attendees' blood sugar is likely to spike and then crash over the course of an hour-long time frame. Or if your meetings are held during typical low-energy hours, such as at the end of the workday for some or first thing in the morning for others, participants could be mentally checked out or simply not quite awake. So if otherwise chipper participants leave your meetings grumpy and drained, examine your meeting logistics in an attempt to identify the culprits.

As you can see, meetings can go awry for any number of reasons. But more often than not, these issues can be easily fixed or avoided altogether. You just need to identify your team's specific hurdles, and then apply the appropriate remedy to sail over those hurdles with ease.