Several weeks ago, I published a post on five tips for running an effective meeting and promised in there that I would be publishing another set of five tips soon. Well, "soon" came and went, and I completely forgot to publish my other five tips. Until now!
These tips are meant to work in conjunction with the previously suggested tips, so if you need a refresher on what those original tips were, click this hyperlink.
1. Document important action items. Oftentimes, you're not going to be able to solve everything in a meeting occurrence as people need to go figure stuff out. You want to make sure these things don't get lost in the weeds, so be sure to document important action items. Make sure it is clear who will be running with each particular action item, and cascade out that those action items via email shortly after the meeting's end.
2. Try to meet in a quiet space. This is especially important if you're teleconferencing with folks offsite. I don't know how phone technology works, but I can tell you from experience that those phones pick up everything, including background noise. Background noise can be a huge distraction regardless of whether or not you're on a teleconferencing line. If you can, try to wrangle down a quiet space like a conference room.
3. Start and end the meeting on time. "Respect" is the key idea around this tip. It doesn't necessarily hold importance for your meeting in and of itself, but the idea is to respect the time of the folks in your meeting as well as other meeting holders before and after your meeting. When you run over on time, you inevitably shorten somebody else's meeting time.
4. Ensure all technology is working prior to the start of the meeting. Whether you're messing with a projector or hooking up a teleconferencing line, technology is fickle. Nothing is more annoying or a waste of time than spending the first 5-10 minutes of your meeting trying to get your tech working. Take ten minutes prior to the meeting to get all your tech issues worked out, and if you can't get into your meeting room directly before, try finding any time a day or two before.
5. Ask if a meeting is really needed or if the scope of that meeting can be accomplished via something like email. This question is especially important to meeting series. When a series of meetings is originally set up, it is generally understood why that meeting series is needed, but as time goes on, the original purpose of the meeting tends to get lost or is simply not needed anymore as priorities change. In this case, I'd encouraging conferring amongst yourselves to determine if the scope of that meeting can be done via email or perhaps is just cancelled altogether.
That's it! Sorry for the delay in getting the rest of these out there. If you have any additional tips you think everybody else would benefit from, sound off in the comments.
These tips are meant to work in conjunction with the previously suggested tips, so if you need a refresher on what those original tips were, click this hyperlink.
1. Document important action items. Oftentimes, you're not going to be able to solve everything in a meeting occurrence as people need to go figure stuff out. You want to make sure these things don't get lost in the weeds, so be sure to document important action items. Make sure it is clear who will be running with each particular action item, and cascade out that those action items via email shortly after the meeting's end.
2. Try to meet in a quiet space. This is especially important if you're teleconferencing with folks offsite. I don't know how phone technology works, but I can tell you from experience that those phones pick up everything, including background noise. Background noise can be a huge distraction regardless of whether or not you're on a teleconferencing line. If you can, try to wrangle down a quiet space like a conference room.
3. Start and end the meeting on time. "Respect" is the key idea around this tip. It doesn't necessarily hold importance for your meeting in and of itself, but the idea is to respect the time of the folks in your meeting as well as other meeting holders before and after your meeting. When you run over on time, you inevitably shorten somebody else's meeting time.
4. Ensure all technology is working prior to the start of the meeting. Whether you're messing with a projector or hooking up a teleconferencing line, technology is fickle. Nothing is more annoying or a waste of time than spending the first 5-10 minutes of your meeting trying to get your tech working. Take ten minutes prior to the meeting to get all your tech issues worked out, and if you can't get into your meeting room directly before, try finding any time a day or two before.
5. Ask if a meeting is really needed or if the scope of that meeting can be accomplished via something like email. This question is especially important to meeting series. When a series of meetings is originally set up, it is generally understood why that meeting series is needed, but as time goes on, the original purpose of the meeting tends to get lost or is simply not needed anymore as priorities change. In this case, I'd encouraging conferring amongst yourselves to determine if the scope of that meeting can be done via email or perhaps is just cancelled altogether.
That's it! Sorry for the delay in getting the rest of these out there. If you have any additional tips you think everybody else would benefit from, sound off in the comments.
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