In the business world, meetings are a vital means of communication. At a high level, they’re where information from across the whole business can be pooled and turned into strategy that will bring the business new success. At lower levels, they help to keep teams communicating and pulling in the right direction, as well as sharing results and disseminating new information.
It’s an unfortunate fact, though, that meetings can often degenerate into hours-long exercises of ego and politics that don’t translate into the vital action needed to spur the team forward. Today we’re presenting a short guide to making sure your meetings are effective, efficient, and get the job done.
Stand Out From the Crowd
If you’ve got an issue point to discuss – something truly game changing – don’t just insert it into the agenda for a regular weekly meeting. If you need something to stick in your team’s head schedule a separate meeting for it and change the setting. Whether you go to a different meeting room in your company’s building, or book one outside it will make it a novel occasion and ensure your team know that this is something out of the ordinary. If you’re looking for a Manchester meeting room for hire the city offers plenty of options to bring your team together, especially convenient if you’re dealing with a team distributed across the whole country.
Agenda Building
If you’re running a meeting and want to make sure it stays on topic, it’s important to put together a strong agenda. One of the main reasons meetings get derailed is that people bring additional issues to the room that aren’t covered in the agenda, either extending the meeting beyond people’s capacity to pay attention or leaving no time to discuss the issues you’ve selected as important.
This needs careful handling: while you likely have the perspective to know what needs to be discussed at meetings, whether they’re regular monthly catch-ups or out of the usual calendar, if people on your team don’t feel they are being heard this will create resentment.
The best thing to do is put out a call to your team prior to the meeting for agenda points you want to discuss. This gives you the chance to take your team’s perspective, possibly incorporating ideas you haven’t considered. You can also identify time consuming issues that aren’t suitable for the meeting and head them off early, explaining to the individuals concerned why they won’t be discussed at this specific meeting and setting a timeline for future action.
This lets you run the meeting you really want to, with staff who are engaged and ready to your agenda into action.