Productive Meetings: How to successfully organise, chair and participate
Posted by: Claudia Raab in Make Meetings Fun on
Jan 13, 2009
Many of us are back at work by now with our brand new diaries filling up quickly with appointments for meetings - external ones with clients or internal ones with colleagues or the board. As we all know, some meetings can be rather difficult: Never ending, too many contributions that aren't relevant resulting in no tangible outcome and frustrated participants. In a nutshell: a pure waste of time and money. Whether you are chairing a meeting or taking part in it, to guarantee a productive meeting and at the same time earning valuable bonus points from your boss and improve your professional image, make sure you consider before the meeting:
- its purpose and
- how you can make valuable contributions to it.
Organising productive meetings is easy if you follow some simple steps:
As a chairperson:
- Work out a clear and specific purpose for your meeting and clearly expect an outcome. Set up a written agenda with time slots for each topic and have a copy sent to each participant.
- Be in control of the meeting
- Set up and inform participants about ground rules for the meetings.
- Cut contributions short that aren't relevant to the meetings in an appropriate but firm way. Encourage contributions and win-win outcomes.
- Appreciate contributions and summarise. Keep the time.
As a participant:
- Know the specific purpose and expected outcome of meeting and contact chairperson if this is not clear enough.
- Taylor your contributions to your audience and make them relevant for participants and meeting's purpose.
- Keep to your allocated time slot and the agenda once it is approved.
Easy to do! Charing and participating in meetings is a great way to improve your professional image and get positive attention. Seize the chance and learn to contribute at least once in every meeting! This is most important for your personal and professional success! Call us if you need further information on how to chair or participate in a meeting. We are here to help you! Simply call 0425 785 143 or email celine.dubois@raabconsulting.com now!