How to Establish an Effective Meeting

Many people can recall a time when they left a discussion thinking to themselves what was the point of that. In essence, you should never leave a meeting questioning the information you just received. However, it may have been the basis of the meeting itself which was formulated poorly causing you to react this way. Nevertheless, there are some strategies you can implement to create meetings that are more effective and are sure to make your business more productive.

To begin, meetings should be based on participation. After all, it would be pretty boring if you had to sit in a room for a long time listening to the same person talk. This is why it's important to get your participants involved, as this is how you will increase overall participation. The best way to do so would be catching people off guard and asking them to offer some comments or suggestions. In doing so, they are forced to come up with something on the spot that is going to be more truthful than if they were given a period to prepare an answer. As such, participation can truly contribute to the overall effectiveness of a meeting, helping to get everyone involved and more in tune. 

Meeting with Purpose

Next, you have to make the purpose clear when holding a meeting. Let's not forget, you have had those experiences where you may feel like that was useless or you didn't understand. This means the presenter did a poor job of outlining the purpose of the discussion for the group. Therefore, try to begin each meeting with a brief review of purpose to ensure everyone is on the same page and knows what's to come. In doing so, this also promotes a focal point that participants can maintain for the duration of the meeting.

To add on, we must become more result-oriented. This means going out of our way to create conversations that start with the prediction of a potential outcome. By doing so, we can assign specific responsibilities to all participants to make sure they are all held accountable for the success of the project. Doing so helps to ensure that we avoid long discussions, as everyone's time is being used more efficiently. 

Staying Focused

As well, it's of the utmost importance to stay on task. With meetings, especially those that are longer than anticipated, it can be difficult to keep an entire collection of people on task. This may be because of technology or simply boredom setting in after some time. In saying this, you must establish general rules as a presenter that will allow you to get your point across in the most meaningful way. In this sense, a rule could be to keep all electronics off during the meeting. This is so there are no unnecessary distractions that will keep participants concerned about other aspects of their life. Also, you must evaluate things being discussed during the meeting in general, as sometimes groups are prone to go off-topic. As a presenter, it's your job to ensure that people stay and topics and everyone can address the same goals. You can do this by asking questions like, “Is this related to our meeting topic?” to ensure collective reasoning.

Leave Time for Questions

Finally, you must leave room for questions. In a meeting space, one of the biggest reasons people leave confused or with concern is because they may not understand a concept. Therefore, it's very important to create a space that is inviting for your participants to ask questions so they can contribute and make the discussion more meaningful. Without this, it creates a sense of reluctance in the room, whereas some people may be more hesitant to speak. Hence, leave room for more open-ended questions as this is how certain individuals can feed off others and hopefully learn from each other's perspectives. 

Come sample some of these strategies at The Box SF at one of our local Off-Site Meeting Rooms. We are located in San Francisco and our venue is truthfully something you have never experienced before. We hope to see you soon!