How to Conduct Effective Team Meetings
As both a team leader and a team member, one of the most frustrating work-related events can be an unproductive meeting. Unproductive meetings are a waste of everyone's time, and may lead to negative perceptions of meetings. Therefore, it is extremely important for a leader to conduct effective team meetings. There are a few key steps you can take as a leader to ensure that your team meetings are effective.
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Instructions
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Set expectations for all parties involved in the meeting. If there are deliverables that must be presented or discussed in the meeting, make sure that the participants are aware of the deliverables. Surprising a team member with an impromptu presentation of their work can be unproductive and ineffective.
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Create and circulate an agenda before the meeting. The agenda should clearly state all talking points or major objectives of the meeting. You can even assign estimated time durations to assign to each talking point or objective.
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Keep everyone focused and on task throughout the meeting. It is important to not let a meeting go off on tangents, as tangents can lead to wasted time. You want to allow participants to voice their opinions, but manage the meeting by facilitating discussions. One way to effectively facilitate is to end any discussions that are becoming redundant.
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Document all major decisions. You can do this by assigning a participant to take on the role as "minute taker." By documenting all decisions, you can make everyone's expectations and memories of the meeting uniform. Documenting decisions can also help update people who were not able to attend the meeting.
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Close the meeting with action items. It is important to leave a meeting with everyone involved knowing exactly what needs to be done and who is responsible for completing each task.
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References
- Photo Credit Three office workers image by Vladimir Melnik from Fotolia.com
