How to Have Great Meetings

Let’s face it, meetings have the charisma of a of kitchen rag. But unappealing as they can be, they are a necessity in the business world. A team, which I assume you have, requires face to face communication. Meetings are excellent opportunities for everyone to voice their opinions and work out some misunderstandings between each other.

Although meetings can present a lot of advantages, the fact still stands that they can feel like total bore-fests. The good thing is that you’re reading this article and I’ll give you some tips on how to have great meetings. Make things more productive by…

Turning Off Cell Phones

Because most team meetings are boring, people tend to check their cell phones every now and then during a meeting. There is also those people who don’t have the common courtesy of turning their phones into silent mode. Every time a ring or a beep sounds off, it wastes everybody’s time by interrupting the speaker and the meeting. The best thing to do is instruct everyone to turn off their phones. Meetings will be more productive this way. And less use gadgets like tablets and laptops, unless necessary. People will be tempted to go on the internet when they have gadgets like these.

Death by Power Point

Do you really have to create a power point for every meeting? Really? Power point has been used again and again to the point that it makes your employees eye roll every time you say “slide”. Sure, it was great when Windows 95 first came out, but it’s 2013, shake things up a bit. And in reality, great speakers rarely use slide show presentations because it diverts the attention from the speaker to the monitor. Draw people in with your words, not with words that fly from projectors.

Come Prepared

Before going to the meeting, list all the topics that you want to talk about, have your team do the same. Never be late and avoid talking about unnecessary things like non-business related topics. It’s okay to have a 5 minute hi hello catch up talk before the actual meeting, but after that, it’s full on business until it ends.

Make it Entertaining

When things are serious, be serious, but if an opportunity to make things light and funny appears, grab it. Make your team laugh, throw in a couple of jokes, laughter is not your enemy, it will be your friend. If your meetings become more entertaining, people will look forwards to it and you’ll see an increase in attendance.

Even though most people dislike meetings, deep down inside, every employee and business owner know that it’s very important. So make people feel that you’re not wasting their time. Make it productive and make it fun.