Planning & Management Kamran on 21 Oct 2007 08:45 am
How to Hold a Business Meeting?
Here are some practical steps to conduct a successful business meeting…
Communicate the following information to all meeting participants well in advance and ask for their confirmation that they received the invitation and they will or will not participate in the meeting.
Optional: From those who decline to participate, you may ask the reason as well to help you plan the next meeting.
1) Decide
- who will be the meeting leader,
- what date and time the meeting will be held,
- location of the meeting (on-line or at a physical location),
- the length of the meeting.
Note: For tele- or video-conferences, or webinars, confirm connection information like telephone number, web site URL, entry password, etc. Make clear what the minimum technical requirements are for the hookup.
2) Decide on the agenda of the meeting, including its purpose and items to be discussed.
3) If there’ll be any voting, decide in advance what the voting rules will be. For elections, the names and bios of the candidates, as well as the ballots, must also be distributed well in advance to all the eligible voters.
4) If there are any presentations, reports or written, audio or video materials to be discussed, distribute them well in advance and ask the participants to study them before coming to the meeting.
5) As the meeting leader, be the first one to sign in, or show up in the meeting room to welcome the others. When participants show up first and wait for the meeting “leader,” it does not contribute to the group morale.
6) Recent studies show that, in general, up to 25% of the meeting time is spent on irrelevant issues. During the meeting try to prevent the participants from discussing matters not specified in the agenda.
Preparation before and control during a meeting are the two golden keys to a productive session.
Make sure do your homework in advance. And once the meeting is underway, try to maintain a calm and unemotional approach to reconcile the differences and reach a definite conclusion on every item specified in the agenda.
After the meeting, don’t forget to send a follow up report, listing those who have participated and thanking them for their time and effort, and summarizing the main results of the meeting.