It is difficult to imagine a business without meetings or other management meetings with employees. During such meetings, contact is made in the team, important information is communicated, and proposals are made. Meetings are not always interesting or important, all the more positively perceived by all employees. In order not to waste time on an empty gathering of employees, you should know the secrets of successful business meetings.
Clear agenda
A business meeting is not a secret meeting, but a planned event, which must be agreed in advance with all participants. The leader or the person who gathers the members of the meeting is responsible for the agenda. It includes the following data:
- Date and time of the meeting.
- The topic of conversation.
- List of speakers. If the leader or organizer invited someone to give a speech, the speaker should be warned in advance. This will relieve embarrassment and embarrassment and allow the speaker to prepare better so as not to waste the time of other listeners on unnecessary information or attempts to recall the necessary data.
Tip: everyone who speaks except for the organizer should know their time approximately. This will allow them not to leave the meeting at the wrong time and not languish in anticipation. The overall impression of the meeting, during which everyone knows their place, will be positive for most participants.
No extra listeners
If there is no desire to see yawning and bored faces of the audience, you should not invite those who do not need to be at the meeting. Of course, it may turn out that the meeting really interests only 5 people out of 100. But in this case, it is still not necessary to invite 50 people as extras, which will only annoy the speakers and mentally wish that all this ends soon.
Tip: you can always invite "burning heads." These are those who are interested in the project, the idea and are not averse to participating in the meeting or otherwise showing activity. Such employees will then happily tell the whole team what was discussed at the meeting and how the meeting went.
Opportunity to speak
This rule of good assembly follows from the previous one. Those who are really interested in the meeting will not mind expressing their opinion on the issue or making an offer.
But a collective discussion, if the meeting has more than 15 people, can drag on for 1.5 hours or longer. In order not to offend anyone, you should give the floor to the leaders of the groups or ask everyone to accumulate interests in order to allow several speakers to announce their opinions.
Monologue Restriction
The organizers of the meetings and the leaders of the team should not make those present bored, while they spend hours expressing their thoughts, hopes and preferences. The time for each participant should be limited.
If it is necessary to decide which is better: to make the presentation short or prolonged, you should choose the first option. If you want to listen to the details, the students themselves will ask questions or ask for other information.
But there is nothing worse when the question arises in the eyes of those present: "When will it all end?" Meanwhile, the organizer of the meeting, as if nothing had happened, tells his opinion about the new project, not paying attention to the tired sighs of workers.
Clear tasks
If the meeting is not purely informational in nature, participants should receive clear recommendations or assignments after it ends.If you want to take part in a new project, everyone should be given the name of the idea, requirements, task and deadlines for its implementation.
Managers who ask employees to fulfill the requirements, but do not set specific deadlines, simply lose time. Without hard limits, many do everything at the last moment, and not only irresponsible workers are to blame.
Execution control
Having received the tasks after the meeting, not all employees conscientiously begin to fulfill them. But if the leader forgot about whom he had set what tasks, then the meeting was wasted.
Regular monitoring of the execution of tasks received during the meeting is an important component of the deliberative process. Follow up must be the one who gave the instructions. Otherwise, the requirements will be optional, which ultimately will nullify the benefits of business meetings in business.
No distractions
During public speaking, the speaker should not be distracted by extraneous sounds, objects or activities. It is not permissible to look anywhere except for text, the screen of the presentation monitor, or those who are listening to his speech.
It is advisable to put the mobile phone on silent mode or off. This also applies to those who listen to the speech: calls, SMS and communication on social networks during the speech of another person is a sign that the meeting is boring and does not carry useful information. When the meeting is effective, no one spends time on gadgets or other ways to have fun.
Short time
It is not recommended to hold meetings daily, as such meetings can be tedious for most employees. But if the need to gather is dictated by the peculiarity of the business, you need to pay special attention to the time of the meeting.
A meeting will be productive if it does not become protracted. A maximum of 20 minutes a day is enough to convey important information and manage to appoint those responsible for daily tasks.
Job analysis
Leaders or organizers of meetings are advised to record the process or keep a special calendar, meeting diary. It should be noted how long the meeting lasted, the main points, tasks and suggestions.
This will allow you not to repeat, hold the next meeting productively and eliminate the need to remember which tasks require monitoring.