Productive and engaging meetings need a clear objective, an open dialog, and a strong leader as well. This will assure that each meeting runs effectively and smoothly.
- Define goals in advance. Make a structure for the meeting. State your purpose for the meeting and what you hope to achieve at the outset. Just stating the ideal results often motivates the participants and makes a meeting more fruitful. At the very least, it underlines a feature that every meeting requires: a goal. Even before the meeting begins, make sure that everybody understands the goals and objectives by writing a plan.
- Get productive input from attendees. A meeting is designed for open communication, so it is critical to get honest input to those attending. It's the responsibility of the meeting leader to make sure everyone is heard. To encourage open discussion, avoid wearing your opinion on your sleeve—it is quite easy for a leader to stifle a discussion if everyone assumes that the outcome is already determined. Make sure that key ideas and decisions are written down. Do this visually, so that everyone can see the developments as they occur. The leader of the meeting or someone else should be designated to do this. Why is this important? Because everyone in the room (or online) can see what's being logged. It limits miscommunication and misunderstanding and promotes accountability.
- Make every meeting matter. Decide if a meeting is required and invite only people which are necessary. Huge amounts of valuable time are wasted just because managers think that face-time is vital or because they've become comfortable with a particular routine. E-mails are usually enough to give your team a status report or an update. But if you require instant feedback from all the participants, then e-mail will not be as effective as a face-to-face meeting.
- Value everyone's time. The most common complaint about meetings is that too much time is wasted. Research shows that most meetings are scheduled to last between 30 to 60 minutes. Why? Because those are the default meeting times allotted by the Microsoft Outlook calendar! Worse yet, most meetings go over their scheduled time. This can and must be avoided. Value everyone's time. Schedule meetings for only the amount of time absolutely necessary to accomplish the goal. Start and finish on time... and keep the meetings moving in between. Don't allow extraneous discussion to run a meeting off the rails. If something comes up that is important enough to discuss, then either cover it in the time allotted or schedule it for another time.
- Close with an action plan. End the meeting by re-stating the intended purpose and goal of this meeting and how it was accomplished. Review any action items and make sure they are delegated. Send a follow-up email to every attendee.
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