Would you like all of your meetings to be effective and productive? Poorly planned staff meetings, meetings that run overtime, and meeting objectives not being met – these are common complaints and feedback from employees, managers and corporate leaders. The following tips will help you stay on course with meeting objectives, encourage participation from attendees, and ensure that everyone in attendance leaves the adjourned meeting with a sense of accomplishment.

Stay On Course

The most common complaint about meetings is that they run over the time scheduled. If we want employees to manage their time, then we should respect the start and finish times of scheduled meetings. This allows everyone to stay on course for his or her individual schedule of daily activity.

Meetings should have a chairperson. That person would be responsible for calling the meeting to order on time, ensuring that each segment of the meeting is run during the allotted time, and that the meeting is closed as scheduled. Be firm with your start time, even if everyone is not yet in attendance. People will learn the boundaries you set for meeting start times, and be more prompt in the future if start times are firm.

Before the meeting begins, the meeting chairperson (or the person holding the meeting) should be organized with required handouts, audiovisual equipment set up, and a prepared and pre-circulated agenda and list of attendees. This helps save time during the meeting and shows respect for those in attendance by signaling that their time is valuable. When the meeting opens, the chairperson can welcome the attendees, review the agenda, and set any standards for the meeting, such as turning off cell phones and indicating when questions can be asked.

Agendas

Meeting agendas are the blue prints to meeting success. There are techniques that can empower attendees to participate and ensure that objectives are met. Agendas should be specific with time frames and topics. (See sample Agenda below) If circulated in advance, agendas provide participants with an opportunity to prepare or gain insight to what will be addressed during the meeting. Your meeting chairperson is responsible for watching the clock to ensure that each item on the agenda is addressed within its allotted time.

It is also essential that the chairperson ensure that attendees do not get off topic from what is outlined in the agenda. This is a major time-waster of meetings. If this does occur, or if attendees are taking up too much time on one topic, the chairperson can kindly interrupt and suggest that those involved continue the discussion “offline”, i.e. on their own time after the meeting.

Sample Meeting Agenda

Collaboration

A creative approach to meeting agendas is to have several people participating in the delivery and presentation of different sections. For example, if the sales department is demonstrating a new product, and the customer service department is presenting a support strategy for that product, there is some diversity in the perspectives of each department and each speaker, which can make the meeting that much more interesting for listeners.

A manager can cleverly ask an employee to present something at a meeting, which will empower that employee to learn about the topic. Using a collaborative approach to sharing information at meetings is empowering for those asked to present. It helps with team building as those offering information gain the respect from those who are learning.

Effective meetings start and end on time, accomplish the objectives set out in the agenda, and educate and motivate participants by giving them a sense of accomplishment. Team meetings should be held on a regular basis to suit the organization and to give everyone an opportunity to participate. If your organization has all of these basic meeting tips incorporated and working well, congratulations! Although there are many other meeting tools that we can learn, these are the fundamentals for your toolbox toward success.

Best wishes for effective meetings … every time!

~ Penny Tremblay