5 Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Meetings
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Understanding when and why to hold meetings is crucial to your success as a manager. Your employees are busy, and time is precious during the work day. Think about the importance of the meeting and if there could be a more convenient way to convey information. In addition, take time to consider what your employees would prefer in meeting situations. Turn to ManageBetter’s critical tips on how to make your meetings efficient and informative.
Send a Survey to Your Employees To Receive Their Feedback on Meetings
As you look to amend your meeting system, consider how your employees would prefer certain conversations and presentations to occur. Create a survey to send to your team to gauge their thoughts on meeting tactics as well as their productivity levels. From this experience, you can use the employees’ input to make the next meetings more beneficial. In addition, this shows your ability to connect with the team and improve their work experience.
Consider Two Meeting Styles: Debate vs. Presentation
There are two main ways to conduct meetings: presentations and debates. Presentations are meetings that have one or more people share information on a topic. Debates on the other hand are discussions revolving around making a decision. However, it may be most effective to entirely remove the presentations in your work setting. Sometimes, information is best conveyed over email and can allow your employees to digest the information prior to attending a more debate-like meeting session. Meetings, where presentation is occurring, can often be boring and waste the work day, especially when this information can be sent in a more organized format with the email. It will allow the employees to have the information to turn to readily if needed.
Prepare a Meeting Agenda Prior to the Scheduled Meet Time
Creating a schedule will allow for the meeting to take less time and allow for employees to prepare what they would like to discuss during this scheduled time. Agendas are crucial not only to staying on task, but they are necessary to create organization within a debate-styled session. In addition, consider checking in with your employees to see if they have any information to talk about in the meeting, and add this to the agenda. It will also allow you to schedule enough time for the meeting.
When Possible, Make Meeting Attendance Optional
This may not always be feasible, but when there is an instance that not all employees need to be at a meeting, communicate that with the team. For instance, if you are having a marketing meeting, those who do not directly work in that department may not have to be present. In addition, consider the workload of your team when deciding who has to come to a meeting. However, if an employee is super excited about a meeting, even if it isn’t their direct specialty, allow them to join in on the meeting to learn.
Take a Leadership Role Within the Meeting
Make sure you are leading the meeting. Direct the topics of conversation when needed, and ensure that everyone stays on task and is actively participating. When you sit back, this makes the meeting unproductive and may make the employees less likely to be engaged during this time. Come to meetings with a positive attitude and look to learn more from your team members on how to solve an issue or plan something.
Conclusion
In essence, meetings can be beneficial to the team or ultimately waste time during the workday. Consider when an email may be more appropriate to present information and ensure that all employees are prepared for meeting time with an agenda set. Foster active participation during meetings to pursue solutions to team goals or learn more from one another.
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