How to Host an Effective Meeting!

There are many instances in our career when we need to have an effective display of our work or we need to plan out a project, through a meeting. It may be something related to personal life or professional life.

If you are an owner of a company and you need to conduct a meeting with your company associates or workers, then you need to be provocative, effluent and effective. You might get a situation where you have to convince the chair person of a Big, MNC, through a meeting, or there might be times, when you have to show your love to any person through your first meeting.

Be it any instance related to our real life or be it something related to professional life. An effective meeting can change the dwelling of our life and can effectively mould the streams of success to wave along, in favour of you and your organization.

When you are the Host and conducting the meeting, you need to follow the following set of rules, in order to have an effective meeting:

Before the meeting begins

Purpose: If you have asked the important people to meet for some professional work, you should always define the purpose of your meeting. This would let the person or the group to know about the proceeding of the meeting and the topics of the meeting and it would help them to prepare themselves effectively for the meeting.

Build up a Presentation: It is always said that the Human mind can analyze visuals, much more effectively in comparison to what is actually written or told orally. ‘These are because whatever we see from our eyes gets imitated in our mind more clearly. So, it is really effective if you create a presentation for your meeting.

Make an Agenda: For every meeting to be successful you need to make an agenda. An agenda may be defined as the sequence of steps that would be followed during the meeting. It may contain the detailed criteria of all the phases of the meeting. Along with it, the agenda also contains the list of the objectives that are to be accomplished during a meeting.

Time and Date: Fix up a suitable time, date and place for the meeting so that it can easily suite all the members. In addition, do inform every participant well in-advance for the meeting.

During The Meeting

Introduce The Members: As soon as the meeting session starts, introduce all the members to each other. There might be possibility that some of the members are attending the meeting for the very first time, so introducing each other would make a favorable environment for the meeting to start in the most promising, manner.

Have A Refreshment Session: After conducting a formal introduction, have refreshment sessions. This is necessary because some of the members would have come from far off place, so providing them with refreshments would re-energies them.

Discuss about the Previous Meeting: It is necessary to discuss about the meeting which was held prior to this one. Discuss about the achievements of the goals that were planned out in the previous meeting and also the tasks which were not able to fulfill.

Start with the Most Important Issues: There might be many issues which you have planned to discuss over the meeting. But, discuss the most important subject, initially.

Involve all Participants in the Discussion: Each and every person has his or her own way of coping with an issue. So, involve all the members present in the meetings to have a group discussion. Give, everyone enough opportunity to give their views. This would be beneficial in three ways; First of all it would certainly help in getting a better and best solution to a task. Secondly, it would encourage and motivate the members as their views and ideas would feel highly respected. Thirdly, they would feel the need and importance of meeting.

Handle Heavy Discussions Well: A good leader is one who can handle any situation in a better way. There might be situations that while a heavy discussion during a meeting; few members begin to have l fight on certain issue. Being a good leader, you need to control them and sort out the things as simply as possible.

Show Leadership: Be a role model for every participant, this can be done by listening everyone’s views in a proper way, showing interest in the member’s views and by appreciating them, their views and also their past works.

Setup for the Next Meeting: With the end of the meeting announce the date, day and venue for the next meeting. Also brief out a small summarized agenda which you have thought of for the next meeting. This would again be beneficial, because, the members may get a chance to propose few more important points for the next meeting.

Do what is Discussed: During the meeting you might have planned out certain things with the members. Do stick to the same, it is not correct if you have discussed a plan and after that you change it on your own will without discussing with other members. Do stick to the decisions that have been made in the meeting.

After The Meeting

Make’ Minutes of Meeting: After the meeting gets over write about the minutes of meeting. Minutes of meeting are actually, a written summary of the proceedings of the meeting. This should be drafted well enough, and must contain all the important points and topics that were discussed in the meeting. This is an important element of the meeting and must not be overlooked.

Distribute Minutes of Meeting: Distribute the final draft of ‘minutes of meeting’ to all the people who participated in the meeting. This would enable the members to work according to the proposed plan in an effective way.

Handling the Responsibility: Keep on having a check, if all the members handle the responsibility in a proper or an effective way.

Give Recognition to Accomplished Jobs after the Meeting: Give recognition and appreciation to those members who complete their job in the proper manner within the effective deadline, as discussed in the meeting.

Remember, a small meeting can make out big results. An effective meeting is not just a news letter or a notice that has been submitted to the members, it’s a procession, discussion and implementation of the thoughts, views, ideas and expressions of all the people. An effective meeting has a great influence on the success of a project. This is because; if the goals have been effectively planned out in the meeting then the members would not have to waste further time on working for the meeting. An effective meeting implants a feeling of team work among the members and also helps to motivate them in a positive manner. As a result, it definitely helps in boosting productivity.

Thus, it is extremely important to have an effective meeting, in order to achieve any task beneficially.