Think about the last business meeting that you attended – no yawning, please.
Did you leave the meeting feeling that the information you received was valuable, or did you feel like it was a complete waste of time? More often than not, people will say that nothing new was gained from the meeting.
Let's start at the beginning. Leading an efficient meeting requires good planning, good structures, good processes and effective leadership. Managers need to find ways to instill a sense of shared responsibility to their team members and have good communication skills in order to make a business meeting worth the time, effort and energy consumed.
In the competitive business environment of today, managers need to lead their teams effectively in order to motivate team members to work toward the common organizational goal. Very important parts of the motivation strategy are business meetings that aim at facilitating the exchange of views on corporate issues by taking advantage of the expertise of the people who participate in them. However, sometimes business meetings fail to add value in business process and end up being a waste of time and energy as a result of poor planning.
1. Determine the worthiness of the meeting
Most of the meetings that take place in organizations are needless. Managers gather their teams to go over details that are already known only because they are strong advocates of the face-time principle. However, this leads to complete failure.
Managers can determine the worthiness of a meeting by making sure that there is valuable information to be exchanged, not simply transmitted.
In other words, an efficient meeting requires the participation of all members and not just the one-way transfer of information. If the manager has to give the team an update, he can do so by e-mail.
2. Determine if feedback from the team is required
If feedback from the team is required for a particular issue, the manager has to call a meeting in order to get more detailed feedback and of wider quality. Besides, efficient business meetings are often the starting point for building organizational consensus and of course this is better accomplished when done face-to-face, rather than through e-mail.
3. Make sure the meeting has an agenda
In many cases, business meetings that take place do not have an agenda. That means they don’t have any goal and as such they cannot result in any outcome. It is very important that all meeting participants understand the possible outcome of the meeting because often this knowledge functions as a motivating factor for participation.
To ensure high percentage of involvement, but most importantly, an effective outcome, managers need to write down and communicate the meeting objectives by BRIEFLY including everything that will be discussed during the meeting to the team members.
The secret to a successful meeting is how concise the agenda is and making sure that all participants get informed about it beforehand.
4. Make sure to assign roles
By assigning particular roles to team members, managers aim at increasing participation in the meeting. Team members who are specialists in their field often handle the agenda issues that apply to their fields. However, there are often shared roles so that meeting participants feel equally appreciated by their leader.
5. Take advantage of "constructive" disagreement
Meetings take place so that information is exchanged. This means that participants may disagree and they have to disagree so that a firm conclusion is reached. Through constructive disagreement and debate, all views are heard and all participants voice their honest opinion about particular business issues. In doing so, managers motivate everyone to participate by feeling that they have an opportunity to be heard and be taken seriously by the organization.
In conclusion, leading an efficient meeting is not an easy task. It requires good planning, good structures, good processes and effective leadership. Managers need to find ways to instill a sense of shared responsibility to their team members and have good communication skills in order to make a business meeting worth the time, effort and energy consumed.
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Marco Giunta has over 25 years of experience in information technologies providing enterprise transformation solutions. He has developed expertise in the areas of IT Strategy, infrastructure, Outsourcing Strategy, Business Process, Business Modeling , Business Process, Acquisition, Merger Strategy, and Implementations. Marco specializes in Infrastructure and Financial Services. 