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Running Effective Meetings: Four Tips

You probably spend a considerable amount of time in meetings. These meetings can be hugely valuable or, sadly, a complete waste of your time. Here are four tips for running meetings that are more effective, more efficient and more productive.

Prepare properly: Go slow to go fast. The time you spend upfront can make all the difference in how well your meeting will run. Using the “8 Ps” will help ensure your meetings are a good use of everyone’s time.
Create an Agenda: A well thought out agenda with specific time allocations will go a long way to having a meeting that runs smoothly and on time.
Write an invite: Your invite needs to say more than “show up at 8:00 am”. Make sure you include a compelling and clear subject line, the purpose of the meeting, the reason they were asked to attend, and what they’ll need to be prepared for the meeting. See our meeting invitation checklist.
Create and enforce meeting norms: Attendees don’t intend to be disruptive, well most don’t, but you still will have to find ways to manage participant’s behavior. Posting meeting norms on the wall and getting agreement at the start of a meeting will help you manage the behaviors that get in the way of having a useful and efficiently run meeting.

These are the rules I like to use for running effective meetings.:

Everyone can speak
Only one speaker at a time
E-manners (no phones or computers)
ELMO (Enough Let’s Move On)
Start and stop on time

When someone breaks the rules that were agreed upon, you simply can refer to the posted norms. This keeps the offending person from being called out and embarrassed.

These four rules are a good start to make your meetings more productive.

Hire Laurie Brown for Meeting Facilitation Training

Contact me if you or your team need to make meetings more effective, efficient and productive. Laurie’s programs get results. Learn methods to run meetings that work. Meeting facilitation workshops are ideal for in-house training or breakout sessions at your next event.