Business Skills - Preparing for successful meetings

We've all sat in meetings, wishing we were somewhere else. Lots of them are badly run and ineffective. What's worse? Surveys show that meeting organizers often have no idea that their meetings aren't very good. That means they don't ask for feedback or change their approach. Common problems include people not knowing why they're in a meeting. Conversations are dominated by a few assertive colleagues. There's no environment in which people can really develop ideas. Most managers would agree that a client presentation, for example, requires some thought and preparation. But they often ignore this best practice when it comes to meetings. A typical meeting model is 10% planning, 80% meeting, 10% follow up. A much more effective model is 50% planning, 20% meeting, 30% follow up, improved planning and follow up will make your meetings better and shorter. So what should that include one defining measures of success? Start by thinking about the end of the meeting and set measures for a successful outcome. This isn't limited to defining objectives and decisions. It includes other factors such as time management and levels of participation and interaction. Clearly defined meeting deliverables will help keep your meeting on track two, choosing the relevant participants invite the minimum number of people required. They should be the people directly involved in and affected by the decisions of the meeting. Small meetings are generally easier to manage and allow more interaction. This helps you reach decisions more quickly. Large meetings may be harder to control and often run longer than planned three. Setting a clear agenda. This is the key tool for keeping a meeting focused and on time. A good agenda communicates the goal of each item with a rough time limit. When the goal of the discussion is clear, it's less likely that people will talk off topic, time limits help you move things along when necessary. If possible start and end with items on which you think there'll be agreement. This creates a positive atmosphere both at the start and at the end four, doing some pre meeting activities. It's often easier to keep an agenda if it is owned by the participants, try to allow everyone some input into forming the agenda. Before the meeting, you can ask people to help you prioritize items and set expectations, share updates and provide background information for the discussions. You might even assign roles, timekeeper minutes, taker, co facilitator, et cetera. The more preparation you do the more time you'll have in the meeting for problem solving and decision making. Five, choosing the right kind of collaboration. There are several ways to hold a discussion, choose the best form of collaboration for each agenda item. For example, if you want ideas have a brainstorming session without fear of criticism. If you want to know what people think, go round the table and allow everyone the same amount of time to speak without interruption. If you want to save time, break into smaller groups with assigned tasks. If you want to prioritize a set of actions, make a list and ask everyone to indicate which actions they think are most important. Six setting common ground rules in your first meeting with any group, discuss and set some rules for how your meetings should be run and how people should interact. This is especially important for an international meeting in which different work cultures are mixed. It's also helpful for virtual or hybrid meetings where good group dynamics are more difficult to maintain. Seven, evaluating your meeting, take a few minutes at the end to evaluate and discuss the meeting. Find out what lessons you can learn for next time, you can get anonymous feedback if the group members have not yet built up enough trust with each other. Otherwise you can use a three word process, ask each person to say three words that describe their experience. This is quick and should give you an idea of how the meeting went and what you can improve.