Meetings are a fact of life in business. Some people love them, others think they take up too much time. The key is to ensure that meetings are effective and time efficient. Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of meetings.
Start on Time
Time keeping is essential. Start every meeting on time. Late-comers will get the message after turning up late on a few occasions – they will see that you won’t wait for them and will tend to make the effort to be on time in future. It’s also important to end on time (or better, slightly early). If you build a reputation for letting meetings drag on, you could struggle to get people to turn up to future meetings as they may perceive your sessions to be too time consuming.
Create an agenda
An agenda adds structure to a meeting. Outline the points to be considered, detail the decisions which need to be made and circulate the agenda in advance of the meeting. This will help make your meetings more efficient and will also ensure that, more often than not, decisions are made.
Take minutes
Ensure that someone takes minutes. Decisions made should be noted and minutes should be circulated to all attendees following the meeting. Minutes should be circulated within a day or two of the meeting – to ensure that matters discussed are still fresh in the minds of the meeting attendees.
Actions
Actions should be agreed at meetings and make sure that these are noted in the minutes. If an attendee is required to do something following a meeting, ensure to assign a deadline for the action to be completed by. This will help you to get things done.