6 Tips to Make Your Meetings More Effective
Does your fleet operation struggle to find enough time in the workday to get its work orders done? If so, it can be hard to take employees away from their day-to-day tasks for a meeting. Because of this, it’s important to make sure meetings are run effectively to address key items without wasting staff members’ time.
Know What You’re Trying to Accomplish in the Meeting
Forbes.com suggests that every meeting should have a purpose. The meeting owner should be able to state why the meeting is being held and why each person is needed there. If the owner can’t define the purpose of the meeting, then he or she should question whether the meeting is needed.
Set an Agenda
Every meeting should have an agenda. This will keep the meeting on-target and will help ensure the objectives of the meeting are met. This will also help lay the foundation for the next steps, as the meeting should lead to action items to accomplish its goals.
Start and End on Time
Meeting owners should respect attendees’ time, Forbes.com suggests. Therefore, all meetings should start and end on time. This will prevent time from being wasted and attendees feeling frustrated by having unexpected time added to their schedules. To accomplish this, Forbes.com recommends scheduling meetings for the actual amount of time you need. Instead of scheduling a 30-minute meeting when you know you have enough material to fill 60 minutes, then set the meeting for an hour so attendees go into the meeting expecting to be there for that time frame. They can then plan their workday around being in a meeting for that amount of time.
Get Everyone Engaged
To make meetings effective, Forbes.com states that it’s important to get all attendees to participate. The website suggests that to encourage involvement, the meeting organizer should start with an ice breaker, request participation from attendees, or, if the meeting isn’t mandatory, make attendance optional so only those who are engaged and want to participate attend.
Take and Share Notes
Each meeting should have a note taker who records the minutes from the meeting and distributes them to all attendees afterwards. This will give employees something to refer to if they have a question or need a refresher on what was discussed during the meeting. This also provides a record of decisions made and tasks assigned during the meeting.
End with an Action Plan
The NYTimes.com suggests that every meeting should reserve a few minutes at the end to discuss an action plan. This can include assigning tasks to individuals, setting deadlines for when work needs to be completed, and the next steps for the group. This will help ensure the ideas discussed during the meeting come to fruition.