How to Run Effective Meetings – 10 Top Tips
1. First ask yourself “Do we really need a meeting?” Many meetings can be avoided altogether. Ask yourself if you can get what you need from a memo, from a few phone calls, from circulating a document for comments or from a smaller sub-group?
2. Get very clear before you start, about what the meeting is for: do you want to share information? gather input? get agreement? resolve issues? celebrate success? generate ideas? Make sure you design the agenda to deliver that outcome.
3. Set a clear goal – what will success look like? Make sure that your meeting design will deliver that. Do you have the right participants to achieve this goal? It’s no good planning for a decision if the ultimate decision-maker isn’t in the room.
4. Allow plenty of time for planning the meeting. How long will it be? What’s on the agenda? Do you need to circulate any material in advance? Who’s going to do what? How will you manage the time and keep the energy flowing? What can you do to vary the pace and rhythm (e.g. different speakers, different ways to present information, varied activities, breaks.)
5. What are the potential pitfalls? If there’s an individual who tends to hog the airtime how can you avoid this? e.g. by setting up some ground-rules at the start of the meeting or limiting the time he or she is present. Can you get any potentially difficult individuals “onside” in advance?
6. Think about how you can use the environment to help achieve your objectives. If you want a short information-sharing session with minimal discussion, try having an on-your-feet meeting – it gives everyone an incentive to be concise. If it’s a creative session you’ll need a relaxed, informal and stimulating environment – get away from board-room style tables and make people as comfortable as possible – ideally offsite. If it’s a decision-making meeting, think about how will you get the information across, e.g. via AV equipment, handouts etc and whether people will need to take notes or refer to documents.
7. Agree ground rules at the beginning. Make everyone aware of what you want to achieve in the meeting (the objective) and how you plan to do that (the agenda) and even more importantly how you want people to behave. This is the most frequently overlooked point and can lead to disaster! It includes some basic housekeeping (e.g. phone and Blackberry etiquette), individual roles, and getting clear about everyone’s expectations.
8. Manage the energy in the room. Be aware if people start to get restless or fidgetty – you need to move things on or break the impasse. Call a break and get people moving about – maybe do an energizing exercise.
9. Set start and finish times and stick to them. That means you’ll need to plan in advance how much time to devote to each item. If you over-run on an item you need to flag that and make sure you cut down elsewhere. No one will thank you for letting the meeting sprawl out of control or run over.
10. Make sure someone takes the minutes and this should not be the Chair. Get the minutes out within 48 hours – ideally in 24. Any longer and people’s memories start to fade and the agreed actions may be overtaken by events.
About the Author
Clare Flynn is the Managing Director of ANT Consulting. ANT helps companies grow their business by developing growth strategies and plans, generating and implementing big ideas and unleashing thecreative power of their employees. She spent over 20 years in senior Marketing roles in the UK and abroad for global companies Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark and United Biscuits as well as 2 years with ?WhatIf! The Innovation Company. www.ANTconsulting.co.uk
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