Business meetings can be the bane of an entrepreneur’s existence, am I right? Because I work with a virtual team, we have frequent Skype or Google Hangout chats. Prior to these meetings we have an agenda and we also have a drop-dead stop time so that we can all get back to work. A meeting that goes on and on tends to lose its impact and your attendees lose focus.
Here are my tips to running an effective business meeting, whether in person or online:
- Don’t go into any meeting without an agenda. Ask those involved what they want to see on the agenda, add it to it and send it around to everyone prior to the meeting. This doesn’t mean there won’t be deviations from the agenda, but it will give you a roadmap to follow.
- Have one person be responsible for the meeting. This team leader will start the meeting, move through the agenda, take notes and wrap the meeting up at the specified time. This format allows all in attendance to focus on the speaker and know they will receive notes on tasks that were assigned to them.
- If a topic will be too long or involved or will only involve one or two of the team members, take it off line. There is not reason to hold “side meetings” on the team meeting and force all other parties to sit through a topic or a task list that doesn’t pertain to them.
- Declare your meeting times as “device-free” times. Your staff should be paying attention to the meeting, not to their cell phones or email alerts.
- Keep the meeting to seven or fewer people. More than that and the meeting will run long and not everyone will get a chance to speak. Smaller is better.
- Keep the meeting to one hour or less, if possible.
- Use the last ten minutes of the meeting to recap and to make certain that all parties know their marching orders.
How often does your team meet? Are the meetings effective?