Effective Meetings

5+1 P’s of Effective Meetings

1. Purpose: Have a good reason behind the meeting.
2. People: Ensure the right people are invited for the meeting who understand the topic or can add value. Determine if you need an outside speaker.
3. Planning: Have an agenda, written with action verbs. Circulate the agenda in advance and check with one or two key persons if anything else needs to be included. Assign a person to take minutes.
4. Participation: Establish ground rules. Use a variety of media to keep people’s interest. Ask open-ended questions. Facilitate the discussion rather than dominating it. Encourage people to share experiences.
5. Presentation: Keep the presentation to the point and allow interaction from the audience for the topic.
6. Perspective: Evaluate each meeting. Ask participants to determine what went well, what was non-productive, what was missing.

5+1 Suggestions for Effective Meetings

1. Always start on time. Eventually the latecomers will adjust their timekeeping and those on time don’t feel compromised any more.
2. Explain in 60 seconds what the purpose of the meeting is, so we focus. Then assign a person to take minutes and another one as a time keeper.
3. Get some input from each attendee no matter how brief.
4. Ask a timekeeper to give 5 minutes warning or notice and finish on pre agreed time.
5. Always keep checking on your audience if any person appears lost and respond immediately.
6. If you are running short of time then take the questions but don’t forget the reply within 3 days

If you don’t want your meetings to become events at which the minutes are kept but the hours are lost…