10 Tips to Make Effective Meetings

We have all been to meetings where:

• There were more participants than necessary
• The meeting lasted a long time for no good reason
• The subject of the meeting was not clear
• When the meeting ended, no result came out

Too many working hours are lost every month and every year due to counterproductive and inefficient meetings in all companies.

I will give you 10 tips to always have effective meetings.

1. Define the purpose of the meeting and make its purpose clear to all participants.
2. Define the duration of the meeting and how it should be structured.
3. You need to set the agenda with the topics that will be discussed.
4. For each topic of the agenda, it is necessary to have a specific discussion time, in order to avoid the participants going off topic and talking a lot.
5. Choose who the participants should be.
6. Decide what is the best time to hold the meeting.
7. Let everyone come to the meeting with pencil and paper in order to take notes.
8. During the meeting you need to be the coordinator, so that not everyone talks together or interrupts each other.
9. At the end of the meeting send an email to the participants stating the issues discussed, the decisions taken, what are the next steps, who will be responsible for each step as well as the schedule.
10. In the end, if you deem it necessary, set the date of the next meeting.