Don't let bad meetings steal your and other participants’ time. Use practical preparation techniques to make sure you make the most of the time spent in a meeting.
Everyone hates long and unorganised meetings. Most professionals are already overwhelmed with their regular tasks and a bad meeting is the last thing they would want. You need to plan your important meetings well ahead of time while making sure that all bases are covered so that you can ensure it will go smoothly while being fruitful too.
Preparation for a productive meeting is not just about preparing your slides and talking points already mentioned in those slides, there are many other meticulous things to do. You need to implement some effective preparation techniques and you will be able to make your meeting concise, pleasant yet productive for its participants.
8 Things You Need To Do Before Next Big Meeting To Make It Successful
A large part of what makes an important meeting successful lies in its preparation phase. Next time when you have to organise a big meeting as a host or a key member, use these preparation tips to make sure you and other attendees get the most out of it, be there are 2 or 2 dozen people.
1. Always have clear objectives:
Do not wait until the last minute to determine what you want from the meeting. Think about the importance of minutes of meeting in reverse to draw your meeting objective accordingly with clarity. Be clear on what is to be accomplished and you will be able to drive the meeting towards the results to meet your needs.
2. Plan and share the agenda:
Once you’ve set your meeting objectives with clarity, it’s time to create a clear agenda. Have your preferred agenda shared with the participants of the meeting right at the beginning. As they will get to know it, they will get sufficient chances to contemplate and suggest necessary alterations, if there are any required.
3. Gather ideas from your team:
Gathering valuable input from the team members before the meeting works well for making it successful. Collect questions and ideas from your team. It allows you to review all the probable solutions beforehand for which the respective meeting is happening and then spend the meeting time discussing and prioritising with efficiency.
4. Note and reflect on your points beforehand:
Now you have a fair number of ideas and points to discuss in the upcoming big meeting. You should jot down the points in your notebook and have it as a reference so you don’t forget. It also gives you a chance to contemplate, thus, refine those ideas and points further.
5. Anticipate obstacles beforehand:
There may be some situations that would be conflicting in nature. Rather than waiting for the conflict to happen, be prepared for the obstacles that may come. Identify such points and prioritise whether they even need your time and effort or not. Be mentally prepared for conflict and determine the ways to move toward resolution promptly, saving everyone’s time.
6. Robust meeting setup:
Make sure you have the meeting room arrangements functioning at their best right before beginning a meeting. Ensure every participant can hear and see you clearly, whether you’re meeting in an actual conference room at your office or connecting through a virtual meeting tool.
7. Make your meeting interactive:
Create opportunities for interaction while designing your meeting. Insert multiple points of interaction purposefully creating a space for your meeting participants to actively contribute. Meaningful engagement of participants helps significantly to keep your meeting interesting and saves it from becoming a boring event.
8. End the meeting smartly:
To make a meeting effective and truly productive, don’t forget to summarise the action items while closing the meeting along with allocating timelines and the person responsible to do them. Ensure circulating the minutes of the meeting mentioning the respective time frame and responsible person/people.
Along with the above mentioned suggestions you can also follow these tips to make an impact on the attendees. After meetings, you can proceed with follow up activities according to the importance of minutes of meeting to make the most of the respective meetings and enhance your productivity.
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Smita D Jain is a Certified Life Coach, Executive Coach and NLP Practitioner. Smita’s ‘Empower Yourself’ Personal Clarity Coaching Programs enable busy professionals unhappy in their jobs to tap into their passions and transform them into professions so that they work because they want to, not because they have to.
Before her journey as a coach, Smita had extensive experience of 14 years as a corporate and business strategy professional with Fortune 500 companies. She is also a speaker at various public forums, a published writer, and an Amazon bestselling author.
You can learn more about Personal Empowerment Life Coach and Executive Coach Smita D Jain’s ‘Empower Yourself’ Coaching Programs by visiting www.lifecoachsmitadjain.com and book a complimentary strategy session at https://www.lifecoachsmitadjain.com/booking.
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