Making Meetings Work

Many of us have schedules that are filled with back-to-back meetings, sometimes leading to a dread of a calendar fully laden with meetings. However, meetings provide great opportunities for personal contact and personal visibility. The trick is to keep meetings from getting out of control and becoming a waste of time and money. A critical skill for good managers and leaders is to know how to keep meetings on track, productive and effective. Here are some ways to do just that:

Make sure to schedule meetings in advance. Don’t expect those that you want to meet with to be available on a moment’s notice. Don’t wait for everyone to be present before beginning the discussion. Everyone needs to respect and recognize that others’ time is as valuable as theirs.
Provide participants with ample time to prepare the information needed. If input is needed from a participant, make sure that is clear when the meeting invitation is issued. Make sure that you are prepared with necessary documentation and information as well. Unpreparedness is one of the main reasons that meetings go awry.

Prepare and distribute a meeting agenda. Identify the discussion topics with timeframes. Assure that the order of the topics makes sense and is logical. Review the agenda before discussion begins on the first topic. Accommodate changes if possible or suggest that any additional topics brought forward be addressed in another forum, at another time.

As much as possible adhere to the individual topic timeframes identified on the agenda. If time runs out before the latter items on the agenda are addressed, put those items at the top of the next meeting agenda. If more discussion is needed on a specific topic, schedule a separate meeting for that topic alone.

Have one of the participants take notes or minutes for the meeting. Identify action items, the responsible parties and the completion dates. Review these action items at the end of the meeting to be sure that there is agreement and understanding among the participants. Make the meeting notes available to all participants.

During the meeting, make sure to provide opportunities for all participants to contribute. Be especially alert to anyone that is voicing an unpopular or different view on the subject. Understanding and addressing the minority or dissenting opinion is important to making sound decisions.

Do not allow meetings to become the only method of communicating between participants. Encourage communication between participants outside of the meeting and to ensure progress is made on critical items.

Identify the start and end time of the meeting. End times can be used to keep attendees focused and to keep wasted time to a minimum. Make sure that you honor a meeting’s end time just as you do the start time.

Effective meeting management is one of the many tools used by successful and effective business leaders. For more information and help becoming a respected business leader, please contact Deborah Van Huis at www.expertiseondemandconsulting.com.