101: Leading a meeting
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Sometimes they're called strategy sessions or one-on-ones; other times, executive staff meetings or project reviews. They are all meetings, and can likely be more effective — even for the best leaders among us.
Since meetings take employees away from work at hand, it's imperative to not have meetings for the sake of having them, but rather to give them a purpose and functionality. Here are three ways to be sure your meetings are as effective as possible:
Meetings should be based on a tangible call to action, not an effort to get updates. So says Glenn Llopis in an article at Forbes.com. “Participants must come prepared and their collective preparedness will … get you closer and faster to a measureable bottom-line outcome,” he writes. Managers should be close enough to items in the pipeline to know the stage of each project, he says. Project management software such as Basecamp can also help track progress and eliminate a need for updates, writes Llopis.
Meetings should be on time and on track. The session should start on time, even if all participants are not there yet, says an article at EffectiveMeetings.com. That sends a message that you're serious, and latecomers will remember next time, the article states. Introduce agenda items and keep things on topic. “This means steering the meeting discussion in a way that fulfills the meeting objectives,” says the article, and can get dicey if there are attendees with opposing views in the room. But stay the course.
Speak spontaneously. There's a lot of fuss over PowerPoint presentations, but “collaboration and decision making happen through conversation,” says an article at Harvard Business Review's website, HBR.org. Speak on topic, off the cuff (use an outline if needed) and from the heart.
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