Quick Guide to Making the Most of Your Next Meeting

Effectiveness and efficiency: these are the two key words, which all successful entrepreneurs try to implement in every aspect of their company. In our technology-revolutionized times, the “old-fashioned” office meetings are often considered as unnecessarily and time-consuming events that constantly don’t lead to any specific positive outcomes and rarely result in the discovery of important problem solutions. But office meetings are inevitable part of every successful business model and you, as an ambitious entrepreneur, should know how to make the most of every team meeting.

Here you can find a quick guide with some simple steps to follow, which will help you make the most of your next team meeting.

1. Invite only the people who need be there. Respect the time of your employees and make sure that you invite to the meeting the people who can contribute to the meeting, who are related to the subject and can benefit from being present.

2. Be specific. When you send the invitation email, make sure that you have written clear subject line, which will clearly highlight the purpose of the meeting. Do it in order to avoid confusion and to help your employee to prepare better.

3. The timing matters. Make sure that you schedule the meetings in the most suitable time for every invited person.

4. Establish clear time frame. Plan the whole meeting, how long it will go on, how much time every part of the meeting will take and so on.

5. Never be late. It is disrespectful to the people. Don’t waste their time.

6. Avoid unnecessarily and unproductive chatter, which is time consuming.

7. In the beginning of the meeting, introduce the people with the agenda once again, share with them the planned time frame and set the course of the meeting.

8. Listen to what has been said. Meetings are not effective if the people, who are attending, do not listen and respond to the information they have been given.

9. Always wrap up the meeting. Make sure that you have a good closure to the meeting. Ask if there is something unclear, if anyone have questions and summarize the final outcome of the meeting.

10. Follow up when needed. If the meeting was very important, it is always a good idea to send to all people, who were present at the meeting, a follow up email with all the steps that need to be taken. It will be good remained of what has been said and will help the team members to include the new tasks in their schedules.