How do you hold effective meetings? Meaningful is useful as well.
Planning for effective meetings
Have a plan for the entire meeting. Fix a goal for the meeting. Study it, revise it and decide what you will get out of the meeting. This is the first step to holding effective meetings.
Develop an agenda that makes the meeting goals clear to the participants.
Assign meeting preparation tasks so that you will have the right mindsets and information in the room.
Involving everyone present
Make sure every participant is taking part in the discussion. Some will gladly step forward and present both themselves and their relevant views. Do realise that some will not. You have to reach out to them, and that can be achieved by asking them questions regarding the topics of discussion. Effective meetings involve all the participants.
Earning a profit
Most meetings produce an understanding about something that needs to be fixed. Before the meeting estimate the value of the result that will be produced by the meeting. Will it take less resources to make a phone call or write a memo instead of holding a meeting? Do you have to hold the meeting to preserve community or consensus? Your estimates are key.
So, these are the things you need to keep in mind if you want to organize meaningful and effective meetings involving you and your colleagues/employees. The key here is thinking out of the box and enforcing new ideas and rules.
Ending the meeting
Assign next steps to participants.
In the last few minutes of effective meetings; review the way the meeting played out. What went well? How might we do it better next time?
Then; follow up with an email the next day. Include all the key points as agreed and as to who will do what.
References
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