How to Run a Meeting

You think you did everything right at your meeting. You started on time, stuck to an agenda that was distributed in advance, and finished on time, or, better yet, early. But you may have neglected to consider one thing that could render your meeting a failure.

Did you need to have the meeting in the first place?

Many offices hold regularly scheduled meetings because that’s the way things have always been done. But maybe there’s not much new to review this week. Maybe what business there is can be dealt with via email. Maybe the latest developments only affect a couple of people, who can hold their own meeting with the boss instead of getting the whole department involved for no reason.

Sometimes a meeting would be valuable except that the people at the center of the new project are unavailable, resulting in a meeting that is a waste of time for those forced to attend.

What to do if you must have the meeting

So once you’ve determined that the meeting is necessary, the first order of business is to make sure that the most critical people are able to attend. Then you can come up with your agenda and email it in advance to those who will be attending the meeting.

If your meeting will involve teleconferencing, a projected PowerPoint presentation or something else that requires technology, check out the meeting space in advance to make sure that everything is working properly. You don’t want everyone sitting around for 20 minutes while tech support is urgently summoned to fix the connections.

Respect others' time

Even if you run your meeting perfectly, there will still be some people who resent having to attend and feel their time could be better spent working on their projects instead of talking about working on them. Career coach advisors say that starting and ending on time and sticking to an agenda is not just efficient business, but tells your employees that you value their time and don’t intend to waste it.

You can also show that you value your employees’ attendance at the meeting by soliciting their feedback. Some people who run meetings prefer not to sit at the front of the room, but to have an arrangement such as a circle in which everyone feels that they are entitled to their say.

However, if you have any employees prone to trying to take over the meeting with their own concerns, throwing off the schedule and frustrating the other attendees, you might be better off sticking with a traditional arrangement of having the leader of the meeting sitting at the head of the table or in the front of the room.

Finally, a good way to show your appreciation to employees for attending the meeting is to provide refreshments.  

Attached Images:

•  License: Image author owned 

Ben Hargrove writes for a variety of career coaching sites, including MeredithHaberfeld.com.