3 Tips To Make Your Next Meeting a Success
No one really understands that it can be difficult to run a meeting until they have to host one themselves. It’s a nebulous thing that doesn’t reveal itself until you have fifteen expectant faces waiting for you to take charge and start speaking.
This blog will guide you on your way to hosting meetings that will cut down on gathering and decision times. Although there is no easy solution to a perfect meeting, these tips will help you improve your current skills. The purpose of this blog is to give the tools you need to make your next meeting, and every one after, a success.
1. Prepare and Distribute the Agenda
I’ll be honest: Not every meeting needs an agenda, but you don’t find out which meetings need them until they’ve already started. To make every meeting a success, plan out your agenda, even if it only has one or two points, to ensure that everyone knows what the plan is.
An easy way to do this is just to write out what questions are being answered by this meeting. This gives the team expectations for the meeting so if they go off track you will be able to steer them back in the correct direction.
Distribute the agenda as soon as you know what it will be. This will give your team time to research, gather relevant materials, and prepare questions that they have about the subject.
2. Take and Share Notes
If you cannot recall what someone said during a meeting, you might as well not have it. Notes are essential to every meeting. You can ask a team member to volunteer or take notes yourself. A handy way of holding people accountable for what they say in meetings is by allowing them to look over the notes at the end of the meeting so they can correct their meaning or present their idea in a more thorough way.
Always, always distribute the notes at the end of the meeting. This allows team members to reference the thoughts from the meeting and assures that they will remember what decisions were made or what action items there are.
3. Restate Action Items
Throughout the meeting, there will be various decisions made about possible courses of action. If you just ask team members if they know what to do going forward, they will most likely say yes even if they were not paying attention to the meeting. To prevent this, restate the findings of the meeting and be specific for each person. Go around the room (Or Zoom) and state, or have them state, what each person is to do after the meeting. By restating these action items, there is less room for confusion and everyone will be clear on their path forward.
Running your first meeting can be difficult. It is important to stay confident and remember your agenda will carry you through. Running effective meetings will help your team meet deadlines by making quick decisions and completing action items. Your team will face fewer communication issues by having notes to reference and knowing what they are supposed to be working on after gatherings. Reducing the time it takes to do these things will give your team more time to complete their work. By following these tips and you and your team will be on your way to having more successful and effective meetings.
