8 Tips to conduct effective team meetings

8 Tips to conduct effective team meetings

Meetings are an inevitable and essential portion of any business’ success. If you are a manager, team leader, or project co-ordinator, it’s a prerequisite for you to conduct meetings from time to time to share the facts and figures of a particular project, cultivate concepts or to establish performance criterions.

An effective summit leads to progressive results and improved productivity. An active team meeting countenances people to build on each other’s conceptions and magnifies the inventiveness of the group.

Summits that are not premeditated cautiously or aren’t coursed professionally waste the time of accomplices along with your association. Time and again it has been perceived if meetings are not prearranged it leaves the team feeling exasperated and encumbered.

When is a meeting necessary?

Before you plan to conduct a meeting, you should be sure of why is that meeting necessary? If the purpose of the meeting is to just pass on a message, then may be a meeting is not required at all. However, you can conduct a meeting if you want to:

• Share information as a group

• Problem solving in a group

• Brainstorming

• Plan and set goals

• Permit people to voice their apprehensions and hear them out

• Accelerate an assignment or jump – start a process that is wedged

• To build working relations and reinforce group bonds

• To take combined accountability for a course of action

• To rejoice an accomplishment

You can spot the ciphers of poor summit management. Signals of a poorly managed meeting are:

• Lack of responsiveness while the meeting is on

• Late arrival in the meetings

• Look for pretexts to frisk the meeting

• Annulment of summits is pragmatic on a consistent basis

• No inference derived on the purpose of the meeting

Below given are the tips to manage a team meeting effectively:

1. Determine the necessity of a meeting
How important is the meeting and when the correct time to conduct a meeting, is the first criteria that you should select before determining to embrace a meeting. For example, weekly review meetings can be avoided on a Monday morning.

But setting goals for the coming week should be held on a Monday morning, as that is when you can delegate tasks and set targets for your team for the coming week. If the meeting is not held at a proper time, you might find your team – mates looking for excuses to postpone or not to attend the meeting at all.

2. Set your objectives and inform the team of the agenda
Concoct an outline and set goals for the meeting. Once you are done setting the outline of the meeting, send this outline along with your invite to your team – members. This will generate interest in your team members to appear for the meeting and they will also come equipped for the meeting.

3. Stay on track
You should jot down the agenda of meeting on a white board. This will help you not to swerve from the list of topics. By adopting this method, you will recollect the points to be discussed. It will also be easy for the other team members to read and remember the points and you will not have to repeat again and again for those who have entered the meeting late.

4. Keep a track of time
While holding a meeting, a lot of yours as well as other participants time if being utilised. Hence it is necessary that you keep a track of your meeting and do not stretch the meeting for long hours by getting into useless debates. If there are certain topics, where you are aware that there would be long discussion amongst the team – members, direct them to discuss it after the meeting and send a report to you via email.

5. Make your presentation interesting
Always aid your meeting with a power- point presentation. This will catch hold interest of your team members, instead of just giving them lectures. But while you take help of the presentation, make sure that you maintain eye – contact with your team members, instead of just reading each and every slide to them.

6. Involvement of your team members – allow others to speak and invite questions
You should give equal opportunity to your team members as well to share their ideas. When your team members will participate actively in the discussion, they will be interested in attending the meeting and will feel a part of the team members.

But you should take care, if the meeting is long, or the subject of discussion is debatable and a large number of participants are there, then the best way is to divide the group and then discuss those topics to avoid bouts amongst the participants.

7. Sense boredom - Take a break
If the meeting is a day - long meeting, then you should provide breaks in between, or it becomes too monotonous for the participants and they start losing interest on the meeting.

For example: Arranging for some snacks or drinks will act as energy boosters for them and will also help in motivating them to a great extent.

8. Minutes of meeting
Try to collate the minutes of meeting of every summit immediately after the meeting is over and email it to each and every team – member of yours.

So the members, who were unable to attend the meeting, will be clear on the points discussed in the previous meeting. In this way, you will also avoid wasting time in the upcoming meeting, discussing about the minutes of meeting for the meeting held hitherto.