Ten Easy-peasy Tips for More Effective Team Meetings
Are you tired of team meetings that yield little to no results? You’re not alone! We have ten tips for you on how to make meetings more effective and less frustrating. It is vital to understand that nobody likes to gather around the table, discuss ideas, and then return home without any tangible results. You may implement these tips to modify your team meeting and make sure that it’s productive!
In this post, we will talk about 10 tips on how to make meetings more effective. As you go through these ideas for improving your meetings, we invite you to think about how you could implement them in your workplace and share them in the comments section below!
Proven Tips On Running Most Effective Team Meetings
As a team leader, you may be accustomed to having meetings with your people. It can feel like a daily chore and just another expectation as a member of the leadership team. But meetings don’t have to play out that way.
You must be wondering how to make meetings more effective and better. The key is to be intentional and thoughtful about your team meetings. Here are ten things to see how to make meetings more effective.
Simplify your content
A top reason why meetings are so ineffective is that they’re focused on content completion. Most meetings focus on “meeting objectives and strategies” instead of ‘actually’ communicating and clarifying what everyone wants out of the meeting. Make the meeting interactive and let everyone speak their minds. This will help you clarify their doubts, give fairer understanding and drive meetings towards their agenda.
Keep a limited number of topics for the discussion. Always talk about one topic at a time rather than picking multiple topics altogether. Additionally, you can first address the needs of your team and then deliver information in a way that they can understand and apply to their work.
Keep it quick and short (but regular)
If your meetings last up to two hours, it is too long for anyone to stay focused! The human brain cannot focus for more than twenty minutes at a time.
Aim for short (15-20 minute) meetings and keep them to anywhere from two to four times per week. These days the work office is virtual, so you can try doing some of your team meetings over Skype or Zoom using Google Hangouts. This way, you can do them from anywhere, at any time, and any number of times per week!
Shorten your agenda and start on time
As we’ve mentioned, meetings are notorious for going over their allotted time. Part of the reason is because of an over-packed agenda! It is recommended to simplify your agenda so that there are no more than one or two topics to discuss in your 20-minute meeting.Another tip on how to make meetings more effective is you can squeeze more time out of your team meetings by being on time. If you start even five minutes late, then the chances are that your whole meeting will go overtime!
Plan your meetings
Always have and share an agenda of the team meetings. To avoid repetition and redundancy, don’t go into a meeting with an agenda that you’ve never looked at or an objective that isn’t even clear to you. If it’s something that you’ve already done, then don’t do it again. It’s a pro tip for how to make meetings more effective.
We advocate a Socratic approach to meetings, where you go around the table, and each person shares an idea and then waits for someone else to respond. This approach will answer how to make meetings more effective because it’s natural for people to share their opinions and ideas even if they don’t know what they’re sharing. This is especially true if they’ve been waiting for someone to ask them a question!
Invite the right people
It’s no secret that meetings are a significant drain on productivity. Think about how inappropriate it is to sit in a room with eight people who are not associated with the meeting agenda or project… It’s brutal!
The essential part of a meeting is who you invite. If you are thinking about how to make meetings more effective, then include only those people who will contribute to the meeting’s objective, only those who are genuinely invested! If this isn’t the right group of people, then there is no point in having the meeting at all.
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Use visual aids wisely
As we mentioned above, it’s better to focus on communicating than on content. However, visuals can be a great way to communicate complex ideas. The trick for how to make meetings more effective is to use visuals responsibly! Visual aids need to be exciting and relevant. Otherwise, they take away valuable meeting time. Plus, you need to make sure that the audience can understand what you’re trying to communicate by using the visual aid in the first place!
Get back to work quickly after the meeting
This is the simplest tip on how to make meetings more effective! After you’ve finished your meeting, make sure that the team gets back to work as quickly as possible! As you know, meetings can be a huge time suck. You should therefore avoid having meetings after lunch or right before dinner.
Get to the point
Remember to focus on effective communication and avoid filler words or important topics! The other thing you want to avoid is being redundant or talking about the same topic repeatedly! The best way to avoid falling into these traps is to get to the point as soon as possible.Also, be clear about expectations. This can be done either at the beginning of the meeting or later on, but it is one best tip on how to make meetings more effective. Make sure that each meeting attendee knows what they’re supposed to do before they leave the meeting. Sometimes this is easy, but if the expectations are a bit more complicated, set aside some time to clarify these things further at the end of the meeting.
Ask for input
This is an obvious one, but many people don’t ask their team members what they need to hear. Instead, they assume that things will run smoothly and people will do what they’re supposed to do. If you want your meetings to be successful, ask for input and listen to your team members.
Celebrate achievements in the meeting
This may seem odd to include in this list, but we find it compelling. People enjoy a little recognition, and they also feel great when others recognize their hard work. At the end of each meeting, find something that was accomplished and celebrate that achievement. This will go a long way toward keeping people on your team engaged and motivated and will improve productivity over time.
Conclusion
Team meetings are a boon to everyone’s existence. We recommend a pretty radical approach to meetings. Most people spend too much time in meetings and tend to become redundant.
Take notes of these 10 tips on how to make meetings more effective and you’ll be able to concentrate better for making decisions during the meeting.
