Are you confident that your project meetings are effective? Most people reading this will answer ‘no’ to that question. Meetings can be difficult, especially when there are a group of people looking at you who think you are simply wasting their time. However, it does not need to be this way. You can get more out of your meetings, ensuring they are effective each and every time. Read on for some top tips.
· End every meeting with a role call – What this means is that when you end every meeting, you need to do so by creating the next steps for everyone that is involved. This ensures that when all team members leave the meeting, they leave knowing exactly what they need to do next so that they can jump right back into work. Ask each team member for his or her action plan before your session is adjourned. By doing this, you ensure that everyone ends the meeting on the same page, and you create accountability, as each team member has confirmed their responsibilities publically.
· Take a project management training course – There are a lot of effective project management training courses available today, and you will find that the vast majority of them include a comprehensive segment on conducting successful meetings. After all, every project manager knows how critical meetings are to the success of the project.
· Create an agenda that is goal-oriented – Before any meeting, it is important to decide in advance what you hope to accomplish from it. This could be anything from brainstorming ideas, to coming to a decision about an important part of the project, to simply finishing a customer email. These goals need to be turned into the agenda, and it is up to you to make sure that the conversation does not deviate from these points. If you do not have a goal-oriented agenda, your meeting will have no focus and no purpose, and that is when it can feel like a waste of time.
· Don’t involve unnecessary people – So many project managers are guilty of inviting people to meetings that don’t need to be there. All you are doing is draining your colleagues’ precious time. You can ensure your team members stop dreading ‘useless’ meetings by only inviting necessary parties. By doing this, whenever your host a meeting, those invited will know that what is discussed is going to be valuable to them and that they need to contribute. If you are struggling to determine whether people need to attend or not, make a list of all employees you are considering asking to the meeting, and provide a valid and tangible reason for why they need to be there. If you cannot provide such a reason, do not invite the person in question.
· Avoid status update meetings – Finally, status update meetings are no longer required in a day and age where we have effective team collaboration software, which allows us to share updates quickly and freely. There is no point in gathering in a room to share this when you have already shared it online and asked questions.
