Effective Meetings: The Power to Get Things Done

A badly run meeting is not only a waste of time and money but it may also prevent your from accomplishing worthwhile goals for the day.

To avoid wasting time in meetings, consider these tips:

• Call a meeting only if necessary.
• Keep a meeting’s objective in mind at all times.
• Invite people with diverse opinions so you can hear thoughts from both sides of an issue.
• Distribute a memo detailing a meeting’s subject at least one day prior to the actual meeting so that attendees can be prepared.
• Provide food only for longer, or more formal meetings.
• Develop and write out a tightly focused agenda. Use the agenda to refer conversation back to the subject when the meeting goes off-track.
• Ask all attendees to prepare for the meeting ahead of time. Request that each attendee bring at least one suggestion to share.
• Open meetings with an interesting and starling fact about your organization.
• Use visual aids whenever possible. Computer projection screens, slide shows, charts and handouts are excellent tools.
• Set a time limit for the meeting and hold yourself to this time frame.
• Start promptly at the scheduled time.
• Discuss one subject at a time.
• Be flexible. Adapt to the needs of the moment if your subject for the meeting is too broad or too focused.
• Listen to each attendee’s opinion on each issue.
• After the meeting, evaluate its effectiveness. Determine whether the meeting’s goals were achieved, how the next meeting can be improved and what can be done to avoid meeting on this subject again.

We've all been in bad meetings. They not only waste time and money, they waste our emotional energy and prevent us from being effective. A little discipline and a little preparation can make all the difference. At our Top Gun for Business People program, we teach people how to run an effective meeting, and use effective meetings as a tool in creating High Performance Teams.