How to Run Effective Meetings

Knowledge on how to run effective meetings is an essential skill that employees should learn. It’s an area that you should not ignore if you want to boost productivity and inspire teamwork. Furthermore, an effective meeting has a positive impact on the performance of the workers. That would even translate to improved productivity.

An effective meeting gives a feeling of fulfillment, especially when you achieve your plan. But, unfortunately,  many people are still stuck in bad meetings. For example, everyone has been in a meeting where the meeting agenda is unclear, and there’s no skilled facilitator. These meetings waste time and do not complete goals.  

Here are the best ways on how to run effective meetings: 

Good Meeting vs. Bad Meeting

What differentiates a good meeting from a bad meeting, and how can you run a good meeting?

Well, here are the tips for successful meetings:

• Noting the time the meeting will run
• Having a proper reason to meet before scheduling a meeting
• Stating the requirements for participants, i.e., agenda item and action item
• Having a skilled facilitator who can run the meeting effectively
• Creating a good plan that states the purpose for the meeting clearly and ways to achieve that purpose

Bad meetings have none of the qualities mentioned above. There is no proper goal in a bad meeting, the agenda is flawed, participants come unprepared, and there is no skilled facilitator.  

Meeting Agendas Offer Purpose

The number one rule of an effective meeting is to have a meeting agenda. For any successful meeting, there must be a specific purpose. 

Before sending invites for members, you must ask yourself: what is my goal? Am I looking for a solution to a problem? Do I need to tell my employees about an upcoming change? Starting a meeting without a defined purpose wastes everyone’s time.  

Encourage Meeting Participants to Engage

Achieving a hundred percent participation is the goal of any effective meeting. Also, you will produce productive work if you have engaged members.

When you start a virtual meeting, it is advisable to make sure everyone in the call is involved in the topic. If not, people will feel the topic under discussion is irrelevant and will not participate.

Run Meetings With Confidence

Once you have decided to meet, prepared the meeting invites, and created the meeting agenda, you are good to get started. On the meeting day, you need to run the meeting with confidence. This will indicate to your coworkers that you should be listened to. Effective meetings need effective communication, speaking, and listening skills.

Contact us to learn more tips on how to run effective meetings.