How to Run an Effective and Productive Meeting

This week on the Public Speaker I talk about how to plan and deliver effective and productive business meetings.  Here’s a quick summary, but you can listen to the episode here. (It’s less than 10 minutes.)

• Know and state the purpose of your meeting.  Meetings are good for coming to resolution.  If you are sharing information perhaps another approach is better.
• Know and state the idea outcome.  This motivates participants to achieve it.
• Include the purpose and outcome on the agenda.
• List required and optional attendees.
• For each topic list who, what, and how long.  Ex.  Review conference location – Paul G. 3 min
• Include breaks and social time on the agenda.
• Send out agenda at least a day in advance.
• Start and end on time, even if everyone is not there. Return from breaks on time too.
• Mange time by assigning limits to each segment and using a timer.
• Use a two-minute warning system to alert participants they are about to go over.
• After each segment get explicit, public ownership of tasks.
• Maintain a positive engaged environment by assigning a facilitator who asks questions and encourages feedback from all participants.
• Have a rule that only one person speaks at a time.
• Latecomers shouldn’t be embarrassed, but they shouldn’t be “caught-up” either.
• Be sure to greet and say good-bye to all meeting participants.  It’s good manners and it’s good for networking.
• Verbally express support of good ideas.
• Insist on no blackberries, no phone conversations in room, and maybe even no laptops!
• Follow-up the meeting by distributing the notes quickly and updating project plans.

While researching for this episode I found a few, fresh, interesting ideas. I talked about them in this posting on my Art of Speaking Business Blog.  Look at the bottom of the post.