By Melanie Kwok, Content Creator and Junior Writer, from The Hoffman Agency.
Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
If you work in an office, then you will know that there is no escaping the cycle of meetings.
Depending on the nature of your job, you might find yourself caught in one (or five!) meetings across your day. The ones that are a complete soul-sucker, or the ones that have you constantly on the edge of your seat, or even the ones that leave you pondering if the employee beside you has forgotten to use mouth wash in the morning – we’ve all been through it.
This unproductive trend is so rampant, that a term was coined:
According to a survey by Salary.com last year, too many meetings have even been ranked as the top time-wasting office activity. No matter how much you’d prefer to spend the hour taking a power nap or grabbing more food from the pantry, there appears to be no other way to avoid office meetings except to sit through them.
So you might as well make the best of it. Here are some tips to conduct quick and effective meetings in a jiffy.
1. Invite wisely. When scheduling a meeting, take time to consider if your attendees have the necessary skills or expertise to contribute to your agenda, and if they will find the meeting relevant.This will filter out the optional attendees from the required ones. Including attendees who are superfluous may affect the progress and lower the morale and energy of the meeting. These attendees will also very likely thank you for not wasting their time.
2. Set an agenda and stick to it. Be specific in your purpose of the meeting so everyone knows what to expect and what to prepare. Ideally, discussion materials and the agenda should be disseminated prior to the meeting. This will speed up the pace of meetings and less time will be wasted in transition. Starting and ending on time will demonstrate your value for people’s time.
3. Be prepared to do the minutes. There’s nothing worse than coming out of a meeting and realizing you missed an important deadline or omitted a salient project detail. Come prepared with a laptop or pen and paper. Making notes will allow you to better organize information and keep you focused on the important details.
4. Speak up. Whatever you do, don’t be a mute. Engage in key discussions and challenge ideas. Bring constructive opinions to the table and voice viable concerns. This is the best time to raise key issues with everyone and gather extensive feedback. If you sense anyone potentially fading, go the extra mile to summon their attention back into the meeting. After all, two heads are better one.
5. Stay focused. We get it, a grumbling tummy in the meeting room needs to be satisfied, but that doesn’t mean you can bring a spread in. If need be, ban the use of smartphones. The faster you clear the checklist, the quicker you can leave the meeting room. Distractions not only waste time, they also disrupt the momentum.
6. Be early. Never underestimate the time needed to connect your laptop to the projector screen or distributing the latest copy of the monthly report. Time needs to be accounted for technical difficulties, administrative work and even the forgetful employee who puts everyone else on hold because they left a document on their desk.
7. Send a follow-up email within 24 hours. There is little point in holding a meeting without subsequent call-to-action. Reiterate key discussion points, responsibilities and pressing deadlines in a follow-up email because chances are, no one has a perfect memory. No matter what, be sure to thank everyone for their contribution and participation.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melanie Kwok is currently a Content Creator and Junior Writer at The Hoffman Agency. She is a digital media enthusiast who is fascinated by the models of social interactions and human behaviors. She’s also a recent graduate of the University of Newcastle, Australia majoring in Public Relations and Journalism.
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