6 strategies to ensure your meetings are highly productive
6 strategies to ensure your meetings are highly productive
People dread business meetings where nothing gets
accomplished.
To help you make every meeting worthwhile, Entrepreneur's
Stan Popovich offers tips to ensure meetings aren't just useless time sinks.
• Have goals. Know what you need to accomplish in a meeting
and write it down. Share your goals with other attendees and don't end the
meeting until those goals are met.
• Write a summary or agenda beforehand. Use this to plan
your communication methods for various points you want to make and share the
document with attendees. This will align everyone's expectations with what's
going to happen and reduce fears or rumors beforehand.
• Stay on task. If someone goes off on a tangent, politely
steer the discussion back to your agenda.
• Encourage everyone to participate. Don't just let a few
people take the meeting hostage. Create an environment where everyone feels
empowered to contribute.
• Hang back afterwards. Don't just give your presentation
and bolt. Chances are, someone will have a follow-up question and you'll want
to know that everyone fully understands what's going on.
• Change it up. Ask for ways to change up meetings from time
to time so participants don't get bored. Consider meeting in a new venue or
varying the format.
