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Teleconferencing (1)

According to a recent Microsoft survey of 38,000 workers in 200 countries, 5.6 hours each week are spent in meetings and 69% feel meetings aren't productive. I'm sure you've been to a meeting that you felt was a total waste of time because the host wasn't prepared, there was no clear agenda or no one could stop talking about the topic that was supposed to be 'taken offline'.

Here are some helpful tips I learned that you can use to make your meetings more productive.

1. Know why you're having the meeting and your expected outcomes - Don't have a meeting for the sake of having a meeting. Have a purpose and know what you want to accomplish.
2. Build an agenda with time allocations - Identify the areas you want to focus on and how much time you'll spend on each topic. Send this out prior to the meeting to all the participants so your meeting stays on track.
3. Establish ground rules - Let people know what you expect from them (stick to the time allocations, full participation, etc.) and review the agenda.
4. Designate a note taker and timekeeper - Stay focused on leading the meeting and appoint others to take notes and watch the time. It's too challenging to try to do it all yourself and your participants will appreciate having your complete attention on the agenda. If you're using a conference call service, record your meeting so you can go back to it if there are questions.
5. Lead the meeting - Take charge and keep everyone focused. That means shutting down sidebar conversations and asking people to give their opinions.
6. Encourage full participation - Do this by asking directly for feedback, create break-out groups or sub-conferences if you're all on the phone. If you have on-site and remote participants, make sure to include the remote participants in the discussion.
7. Stay focused - Don't be afraid to ask people who go off on tangents to save it for another meeting. Your participants will be happy that you're keeping everyone on task.
8. Summarize to verify agreements and action items - Recap the meeting to make sure everyone knows what was agreed to and who's responsible for what.
9. Follow-up on assignments and agreements - Send notes so people are reminded of who needs to do what, by when and don't forget those who missed the meeting. If you recorded the conference, include the playback link for reference.
10. Evaluate your meetings - Ask for feedback from participants and see what you can do differently next time.

At Everest Communications we're not just focused on selling conference calling - we're focused on effective communication.  When you consider the amount of time we're all in meetings it makes good sense to put forth effort at running effective meetings.  Whatever it takes to help you become a more effective communicator (on or off conference services) we're interested in helping.  Beyond hopefully helping with the tips above we're equally interested in hearing from you about tips you've found to be effective in your real life experiences.  Let us know.  Let's grow together!