Raise your hand if you think that your monday’s get spoiled due to team meetings!
However, meetings (whether one-on-one or team), are not a bad thing. They are a necessity for exchanging information, trouble shooting, and reviewing real-time and past progresses. However, some necessary guidelines should be followed to make meetings effective and more manageable.
This piece of writing has attempted to share some of those:
1- Is gathering necessary?
Effective meeting is not about how big and tip-top your meeting hall looks like and how much people gather to listen. Sometimes the objective of the meeting can be achieved by circulating a memo or on a simple conference call. If you don’t have a huge team, speak to them individually or if they are supposed to handle different tasks differently. You can even postpone it to next meeting or another better opportunity of get together.
2- Write down your agenda
This may be the first and foremost necessary tool for an effective meeting. Make out an agenda or a list of all important things that must be covered in the meeting. Put the name of the person right in the front of the particular issue, he is supposed to discuss. Distribute the agenda copy, if plausible, twenty-four hours before the meeting so that each person exactly knows what he is responsible to contribute. Everyone should be clear about the objective of the meeting and what will be discussed. This applies to all modes of meetings_ one-on-one meetings , meetings with subordinates, meetings with customers or clients, and whoever else.
3- 80/20 rule
This rule can be applied in many walks of life,whenever you have to cover a “list of to-do’s”. Design the agenda in a way so that the top 20% mark the most crucial items which must be discussed first. This way, if you run out of time, you won’t regret that you have missed something which was really needed to be discussed, as they represent those remaining 80% of the meeting too.
4- Ask reviews of every member about every point
When you conclude an item of the agenda, take a round in clockwise or anticlockwise sitting direction and ask every member what he thinks /foresees about a particular point. You can also move designation wise. This builds a sense of team-work and mutual owning and responsibility for achieving the target.
5- Summarize before you move on
When you finish discussing every item of the meeting agenda, summarize the discussion on every respective point before you get closure. Get agreement on each item before you move on to the next one. Restate what has been mutually decided upon and agreed to with each point.
6- Keep notes and revise
Keep notes and record accurate minutes of the meeting. Pull them out a week later for revised discussion. This would resolve a lot of potential misunderstandings and everyone would get a reminder of their responsibilities and deadlines.
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