Meetings tend to be the bane of the workplace. And how many times have you been in one only to think “That could have been in an email!” cursing that you’ve wasted precious hours in your day that you aren’t going to get back. This is why when you have a meeting, it should be as productive as possible and you should all feel that you have got something out of it. If you are looking to have more productive meetings, we have put together some top tips that should ensure this is the case. So no more feeling like you have wasted your morning!
Have a clear structure and try not to deviate
How many times have you been in a meeting when you have found yourselves talking about something totally irrelevant? It’s very easy to go on a tangent and start talking about something that isn’t anything to do with why the meeting was called in the first place. While these might be good points, it’s important to cover your own meeting objectives first. If you find the subjects tailing off down a rabbit hole, bring everyone back to the aforementioned agenda and sort those points first. You could also allocate certain time slots for topics and reiterate that people can’t overrun.
Ensure your meeting space is properly decked out
The more equipped your meeting room is, the more productive you might find that you are. If you regularly log onto video calls, you want a space that is well designed and easy to speak to others via a screen, without interruption. We recommend speaking to a professional who does AV installations and can sort out all aspects of your meeting room AV to help make it the most productive space possible. By optimising the audio visuals of the space, you can speak so much easier to those on the other end of the call and be a lot more productive than you might be otherwise.
Properly write up meeting minutes
There is little point in having a great meeting if all is forgotten half an hour later. To avoid this from happening, have someone take proficient minutes that they can then email around to everyone. This could be a summary to those that were in the meeting, and also those that weren’t if they need to be brought up to speed. By putting together good notes and distributing them round it makes the meeting much more useful and the points covered will actually get actioned going forward.
These are just a few top tips for having more productive meetings that are sure to make much better use of your precious time. The next time you have a meeting, suggest the above and make each minute that you are in it count. If you find everyone going off on a tangent, try and steer it back to the main points. This should keep it productive. What are some of your top tips for a better meeting? Let us know in the comments below.
