Work meetings can be stressful and often perceived as a waste of time for your whole team. Finding the best moment, coming with a clear idea of the meeting purpose, taking important decisions, define a project’ plan and all designated resources: all these points can decide if your meeting will be a complete failure or a success.
If you are about to schedule one with your team, you’d better pay attention to these 5 secrets to improve your meeting in order to get a happy and effective talk.
Use a project management software with shared agendas Finding the best moment to schedule a meeting is very important. It could be obvious, but it is not just a matter of finding a day when the team is available, it’s about finding a day when none of your colleagues have important deadlines, scheduled appointments or high priority tasks to close. Having a software that lets you check all of these will help you having a focused team.
Before the meeting create an ideas board If you have to manage with important matter, it will be really helpful having an idea of your colleagues’ thoughts before the meeting. You can use this to understand which of your colleagues share your ideas. An ideas board is also very helpful in order to give to all your team the possibility to share their opinion, even to those not so familiar with meetings’ animated discussions.
Listen to all points of view and understand them Having an open mind is really helpful during meetings. You have to be open also to those that will probably tell you that your ideas are not so brilliant, remember that your goal is to finish the meeting with taken decisions and a plan of what to do next.
Use a draft manager software Write down everything said. The draft management is very important to remember all decisions that have been taken and all discussions leading to them. With a draft in your hand you will be able to easily detect which are the key points for your team and why.
Transform decisions to a real plan Once everything is decided you will need to define a project plan, so use some time of your meeting for a recap, read the draft in details and create a to do list, you can use a project management software for this purpose too, assign these to-dos to your team and schedule deadlines.
Effective meeting are difficult to achieve, generally because you are taking away resources from their “real” projects. Organizing it properly, involving all team members in the decision process and transforming discussions in thing to do will incredibly improve your team culture.