Have you ever had a recurring meeting that you dreaded? Sometimes hosting meetings can be anxiety inducing but for this meeting it wasn’t just me but all our attendees that groaned when they saw it in their calendar.
“This meeting just isn’t working.”
That’s the feedback my team gave me about our monthly strategic client call. As Slido’s Customer Success Manager Lead, I was hosting these 75-minute sessions where our CSMs would sit with executives to review our top-tier customers.
The brutal honesty stung, but that feedback became the catalyst for transforming not just this one meeting but my entire approach to facilitation across our distributed team.
The Strategic Client Call Transformation: My Biggest Win
This is an important meeting for us, it was why we persevered with it instead of cancelling it. Happening once a month, our Customer Success Managers and our executive team review risks and highlights in our customer base, align across the business on their needs and agree on any next steps to be taken.
We wanted the meeting to be engaging with plenty of discussion while communicating the key updates that everyone needed to know.
Let me tell you the full story of how I transformed this 75-minute meeting into one of our most valuable strategic meetings.
The Problems I was Facing:
- Presenting one slide per customer that could’ve been read offline
- Not enough time for strategic and tactical discussions
- Getting stuck on one customer and then not being able to get through the full content
- Lack of engagement and value from the participants we had present
I was receiving feedback saying the meeting was not delivering the value it should – and it was an expensive meeting with the exec team there.
How we Approached it
Step 1: Collecting feedback and ideas from the meeting attendees
A problem shared is a problem solved. At the last meeting before we changed the format, I ran a quick survey in order to gather input from the meeting. I asked them:
- What their expectations for the meeting are
- How they’d find the meeting valuable
- There ideas for how we could change the format
This really helped clarify for me what we needed to prioritize and gave me great suggestions for what we could change.
Step 2: Restructuring the Content
Instead of comprehensive status reports, I focused on two key elements:
- Adoption Highlights: Customer success stories and trends we were seeing
- Blockers and Risks: Issues that needed executive attention or company-wide solutions
The new framework: highlights on one slide, risks on another.
That’s it.
Step 3: Changed the Dynamic
We started the meeting with a quick quiz icebreaker with facts about our strategic customers which not only improved context sharing but set the intention for the meeting that we’d be engaging and learning together.
Then, the most radical change I made was that instead of presenting each customer slide, we’d read them silently. People are able to read faster than they can speak so this instantly freed up half the meeting time.
We would all read through each slide and then open up for questions either taken through Slido or live.
The Impact
Thanks to these changes, this meeting became one of the most engaging meetings of our month as well as delivering a lot of value for the business. These changes:
- Increased executive engagement with thoughtful, strategic questions
- Clear next steps and problem solving that deliver outcomes for our customers
- Respected everyone’s time by allowing efficient information consumption
- Enabled the deeper strategic conversations we’d been missing
💡 The Ripple Effects I Didn’t Expect: Our CSMs grew with having more context and hearing the perspectives of others;, our executives became more connected to customer success outcomes and our entire team developed a shared language around customer risk and opportunity.
What I Learned
The honest feedback about this meeting was exactly what I needed. It was the perfect catalyst for change and enabled me to transform my role from presenter to facilitator.
Three key lessons I took away:
- Honest feedback can be the catalyst for real change
- Format changes fundamentally shift how participants behave
- Patience during transformation always pays off
My Engagement Strategies Today
Over time I’ve developed a framework that treats different interaction types as distinct facilitation tools.
Active vs. Passive Listening
- Active Listening Through Polls: I give real-time commentary on emerging patterns, provide immediate clarification when results show confusion and create dynamic conversation based on what I’m seeing in the moment.
- Passive Listening Through Q&A: I create space for participant-driven topics, questions I might not have thought to ask and democratic prioritization of discussion topics.
I’ve learnt that there’s an art to facilitating polls because anyone can launch them, but to really unlock their value by working with the results, it takes some skill so I’d love to share the tips that have helped me develop as a facilitator.
The Vote Counter Strategy
This might be my most powerful technique, even though it makes me squirm sometimes. You have to get comfortable saying, “Hey, we have 10 people on the call and to make this decision I need everyone to vote.” Then you have to stay there until all the votes are in, encouraging everyone to participate.
Why does this work?
- It creates accountability for participation
- It signals that every voice matters for important decisions
- It prevents decisions being made by only the most vocal participants
💡Important note:I use this for strategic decisions, budget allocations and policy changes. But I skip it for icebreakers, creative brainstorming and low-stakes preferences.
My Pivot Protocol: Turning Confusion Into Clarity
This is something I always tell other facilitators: Be prepared to dedicate time to get that person that voted 2 to a 5.
So when a rating poll reveals someone scored understanding as 1 or 2, here’s what I do:
- Acknowledge the result immediately
- Create space for clarification without putting anyone on the spot
- Use follow-up questions to ensure everyone reaches clarity
Doing this allows me to be responsive without losing focus on my main meeting objectives.
Handling Q&A Democratically
We allocate one or two minutes for participants to read through the questions and upvote the ones they want to see addressed. We’re probably not going to get to all of them, so this helps us prioritize.
For unanswered questions, I use one of three follow-up formats:
- Google Docs Response: I address remaining questions in writing
- Video Responses: I record myself answering questions for a personal touch
- Dedicated AMA Sessions: I schedule separate sessions when question volume warrants it
My Follow-Up Formula
Here’s where most meetings fail: the follow-up that never happens. My solution? Something I call habit stacking.
You have the strategic meeting from 2 to 3 PM, so for the 30 minutes after, you allocate time to actually work with the results that come in from that feedback. And as the leader of a distributed team, those teammates in a different timezone need the recording and summary.
This has been a game-changer for actually following through on meeting outcomes.
Which of your meetings needs some love?
Is there a meeting in your calendar that you dread? Hopefully some of these tips can help you. Slido is my secret weapon and can be yours too.
