Make your meetings more effective...

Our friends at Reality HR have offered a few tried and tested tips to structure meetings for business success.

We'll all be aware of that meeting that doesn't really achieve anything, one that you simply didn't value or one that left you wanting more.  Follow this advice to make meetings successful....

Meetings are essential to any business and can improve productivity if performed correctly. Here are our top tips:

1) Set a goal and an agenda – What exactly is the point of your meeting? What are you hoping to

achieve by having it? Write this down along with a clear set agenda no matter how small. Send it out

to your team and see if anyone has any suggestions or input that might make it even more beneicial.

Doing this also means that anyone who might not need to be in the meeting can see this in advance and

not attend.

2) Set a time limit – It is very easy to get distracted and ind yourself going off on a tangent.  Have

speciic time limits on each of the topics you need to cover and go as far as to have a time keeper that

keeps an eye on the clock and makes sure the meeting stays on track.

3) Manage your calendar - Block out any time that you need to spend on something critical so that it is

obvious when you cannot attend a meeting.

4) Have a no meeting day – Pick one day a week that never has any meetings (unless critical) so that

your team have one whole day a week where they can get in the zone.

5) Don’t be a technophobe – Technology is your friend! You might ind you can save yourself a lot of

travel time by having some of your external meetings via Skype or GoToMeeting. 

6) Get some work done during the meeting – Dish out your tasks and deadlines to your team during

the meeting and get all of your delegating done, thus allowing everyone to hit the ground running.

7) Manage your time - If you have a day full of meetings and ind your actual desk time is cut up into

15-30 minutes slots, use to do lists and plan out exactly what you need to get done during those slots to

keep on top of your work.

8) Get creative – Can you have your meeting over lunch or coffee? Is there a good environment

somewhere that gets everyone’s thinking caps on? Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. 

If you'd like more flexible work advice, hints and tips take a look here.