Have you come across instances where you have looked forward to attending meetings? Do you generally achieve the targets set for the meeting? If no, then you need to comprehend the reasons behind ineffective meetings. Such meetings not just waste time and effort but also hamper productivity. So, the next time you decide to organise a meeting with your team members, remember to keep the following strategies in mind.
How to make your Meetings Effective?
It is generally believed that meetings are a waste of time. However, when conducted in a proper and planned manner, meetings can turn out to be fruitful and effective. So, let us briefly go through the strategies for making meetings effective at the workplace.
1. Have a clear objective: The first and foremost strategy for an effective meeting is that you should have a clear objective in mind. This implies deciding upon the topic of discussion. Are you going to discuss about the launch of a new product or service? Or are you going to talk about the rising number of service issues coming up with your customers? Else, you could discuss about the declining revenue of your team? Now, whatever is the objective, it should be absolutely clear and communicated accordingly to the employees who are going to attend the meeting. So, in other words, when you have a goal to achieve you will certainly end with success.
2. Have an agenda for the meeting: When you have an objective or goal to discuss, it becomes easy to outline the agenda for the meeting. A well-planned meeting with an outlined agenda is the key to a successful meeting. The following is the list of essential points to be included in the agenda:
It is necessary that you send these essential details to every participant of the meeting so that the meeting goes accordingly as planned and turns out to be a success.
3. Introduce variety in your meeting: Meetings often happen to be very boring and uninteresting. Another strategy for making your meeting effective is by introducing variety in it. You must be surprised and curious to know the meaning of variety in this context! Let me elaborate this for you. You need to introduce some unique features to your meeting which can be done in the following ways:
Engage the participants in brainstormingBelieve me, introducing the above mentioned steps will help you break the monotony generally experienced during a meeting and will make your meeting a success.
4. Make space for creativity: Another significant strategy which can result in effecting meetings is that you should give some space to creativity among the participants of the meeting. There could be an instance where a participant comes up with an innovative idea to a service issue resolution. Or else, there could be an instance where participants come up with genuine ideas or notions particular to a product or service. Remember, all this can happen only when the participants are actively attending the meeting instead of just passing the time in a monotonous manner. Hence, you should allow the participants to exhibit their creative zeal and energy in the meeting.
5. Try and avoid multitasking in the meeting: This is one aspect of our daily lives which is difficult to avoid in the meeting room. But believe me, if you can restrain the participants of the team from working on the laptop and attending phone calls simultaneously, you can make the participants much more attentive in the meeting. There are other ways of doing this as well. For instance, you can assign specific role to each participant of the meeting such as who will be the facilitator, who will taken down the minutes of the meeting and so forth. Ensure that your meeting has a time frame to which the participants adhere to. In other words, another effective strategy is to make the participants simply focus on the agenda of the meeting instead of managing their call logs within the meeting.
6. Have an interactive question & answers session: An interactive question & answer session is another vital strategy to make meetings effective. This also helps you to surmise how much the participants have been able to comprehend the objective or goal of the meeting. This further facilitates in understanding whether the meeting has been successful or not. An interactive question & answer session not just clears the doubts but also bears testimony to the fact that the meeting has been effective in achieving its goal/ goals.
7. Always remember to follow-up: A meeting can only be termed as effective when there is a proper follow-up done by the organizer of the meeting. Once the meeting has been concluded, you must ensure that a proper follow-up is done. You must prepare the minutes of the meeting and share them with all the participants of the meeting. Also, do a proper follow-up of the tasks assigned to any of the participants of the team. Effective meetings ensure that the discussions held are converted into action thereby resulting in the productivity of your team efforts.
8. Using online technology to conduct meetings during the pandemic period: In the present scenario, when most of us are remotely working from home conducting a meeting with the team members becomes a challenge. However, you can overcome this challenge by using the latest online applications such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, WatsApp and other tools. Technology has indeed helped in overcoming the obstacles brought forth by the pandemic in the business environment.
Conclusion
Therefore, to conclude, try and overcome the general assumption that meetings are a waste of time and effort. The next time you decide to hold a meeting try and arrange for a planned meeting by deciding the number of participants, time and place of the meeting and most importantly the agenda beforehand.