How To Make Your Meetings 10x More Productive
Do you always feel like you don’t achieve all you set out to achieve at a meeting or do you feel like your meetings aren’t always bringing the right results?
Do you feel like you could have just passed an information to your team members via email instead of calling a meeting that would hold for about 3 hours with no clear resolutions?
If this feels like what you go through, then you should keep reading.
We hear a lot about how meetings have become so unproductive because the information that needs to be passed can be done via email, telephone, text, or other electronic means.
However, meetings are still very much relevant if they are properly planned. In addition, your meetings can still yield clear and tangible results if you are intentional about them.
And so, here is how to make your meetings 10x more productive:
Have an agenda for every meeting: Don’t just call for a staff meeting because it’s Monday and you think you should talk to every member of your staff. Having an agenda for each meeting helps you have more productive meetings. Another way to enforce this agenda is by communicating the agenda beforehand to everyone who would present for the meeting. This gives everyone focus and a clear direction. At the end of the meeting, it is then easy to know if you have achieved your goals for the meeting or not.
Have the minutes of the meeting taken down: This is important so as to help you review the resolutions you arrived at from the meeting as well as actions to be taken; who’s responsible for what, and so on. Writing down the minutes of the meeting also helps you gauge how productive the meeting was and the things you need to tackle or follow up on the next you have a meeting with your team members.
If it can be communicated via email, by all means do so: For instance, if all you want to do is to notify your team members about the steady progress of a project and you don’t really require all of your team members to be physically present with you; then you should just send an email instead. Always take out time to gauge the reasons for your meetings and how important they are.
Have a clear timeline for the meeting: Don’t just call a meeting for 10 am which would end till whenever and you don’t put a specific time to when the meeting would end. This may derail your meetings and you won’t have the opportunity to control it effectively. When you have a timeline for your meeting, you should also communicate it to the people that would be present for the meeting so everyone is aware. It’s not enough to just have a timeline, you have to be disciplined with it as well.
Encourage people to speak up: What’s the use of having a meeting when the members of your team don’t speak up or contribute to the things they need to contribute to. Some people are naturally shy but you need to help them feel more comfortable that they would be willing to contribute. Also, beware of people on your team who don’t like other people’s opinions to be heard. Encourage everyone to hone their voice.
What other tips can be of huge advantage to entrepreneurs when it comes to meetings? We would love to hear from you below!
