Making meetings more efficient and ensuring they run smoothly from your home is key to demonstrating your effective leadership skills. Employees need to understand what the company needs, and they can only help achieve these goals successfully through communication that comes from an effective meeting.
The effective management of meetings creates a positive business environment and culture. So you always want to run an efficient meeting where all team members want to participate.
To help you run meetings effectively, we’ve put together a list of eight tips to help you be more successful.
Use Effective Video Conferencing Software
The best video conferencing solutions work seamlessly to integrate information and video feeds to help participants focus on the meeting. An effective program won’t have lags or breaks in connectivity. It will offer featured tools so participants can show information and outline specific details visually for every other participant. When selecting the appropriate software, be sure to analyze the program’s tools and determine whether these will be useful when running a video conference from home.
Many practical software applications offer tools like a whiteboard, pens, and marking tools that help you emphasize meeting topics and information. Also, be sure to find an application that allows you to share your written information through screen share features.
Be sure to check on the number of participants allowed per meeting. Some software Solutions only offer options for a small number of participants. For example, if you have large gatherings, choose a video conferencing solution that meets that needs.
Stay on Target
In business, time is money, and no one likes a meeting that isn’t productive. It means that the employees will need to make up for time lost on the job in other areas. When conducting a discussion, be sure that everyone who attends the meeting gets value or can offer valuable input for the event.
Be sure to keep the meeting on target, redirect the conversation back to your plan, and focus on the tasks at hand when the discussion strays to other areas. The session should focus on topics that affect the entire team. Remember that individual discussion is more appropriate in a one-to-one setting. You can improve the management of this focus by informing employees of the topics to be covered.
Get Employee Feedback
Team members must feel like they are an essential part of the project and the company. Running an effective meeting is a team effort, so you want to get feedback from the other participants.
Ask your team about the meetings you’re conducting and whether you’re getting your message across correctly. Then, encourage your team members to participate in the process and develop solutions and directives that work for these online video meetings.
Manage Efficiently
The key to a good meeting is to manage the topics and the information efficiently. If employees have questions on matters that stray from the topic at hand, ask them to dress these issues personally outside of the meeting. Block out segments of time for each of the problems you want to cover. If the information is too extensive, plan for a second meeting to cover the additional information more in-depth.
Decisions
It may be difficult for employees to know their role in a meeting, especially when it comes to decisions. For example, they may be thinking to themselves: “Am I here to listen?” or “Am I here to provide ideas.” Help team members feel comfortable enough to offer their ideas and insight into the decision-making processes.
Your ability to do this depends on your managerial style. Do you want to make a decision based on your team’s consensus, or do you want basic information so you can make your own decision? It is a question you must answer for yourself and guide the meeting accordingly. Whatever the case, make it clear to the other team members. Keep in mind that a team meeting aims to solve a problem and not create more confusion and issues.
Manage Time Properly
One of the simplest ways to make a bust out of your meetings is to forget to manage your time. Set a specific amount of time aside for each topic of discussion. The one thing you want to avoid doing is using the last 5 minutes of your meeting to discuss a big project. You want to try and avoid having the meeting go on longer than it should. If you’ve set aside an hour for your meeting time, make sure that you end precisely in one hour.
If you’ve overextended your time, see what you can redirect topics to your next meeting. Do this as you are speaking and covering the information. Make adjustments as needed. You may need to make a few judgment calls to shorten your time and get back on track. Be sure to schedule in enough time such that all the team members can add relevant information to the topics that pertain to them.
Prepare for The Meeting
Directing a meeting is like giving a class or a speech. You need to facilitate the conversation and keep things moving within the meeting time. So once you set your topics and determine how much time you need for each of the ideas. Try practising before the meeting to track your time. Prepare slide presentations and information in advance.
You can make things easier by emailing information that team members will need before the meeting. Pre-sending the information gives them a chance to review it, assimilate it and formulate clear and focused questions.
Improve Your Meeting Management Skills
As you lead weekly meetings, you can make adjustments and tweaks to improve the process. See what works and what doesn’t. Get feedback from your team about the schedule and your management of each of the topics. If you work with your team members and get feedback from them, your weekly team meetings will run more efficiently.
Bottom Line
Team meetings are essential because they keep everyone in the loop. But they should be something that employees look forward to and not something they dread. Remember, your meeting time should be the safe time where team members can share their thoughts, ask questions and address concerns. With your help, they feel like they belong to the company, that they are a corporate family, helping to improve the overall corporate process or service.
Keep in mind that an efficient meeting is where you address problems 80% of the time.
