Four tips on making team meetings more enjoyable and effective

When people think of a team meeting, it often brings to mind boredom and wasting time talking about things that are irrelevant to their actual job. But this need not necessarily be the case. Even team meetings can be interesting, effective and productive. Here are four tips on how to achieve exactly that.

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Tip no. 1: Share the agenda in advance

According to Gallup, first of all you should inform participants of the agenda sufficiently in advance so they can prepare. Without their having this opportunity, the meeting will be less productive and the organiser, who knows what will be discussed, has an unfair advantage over the other attendees.

Tip no. 2: Invite only relevant people

Too many meetings are attended by people who do not need to be there at all. Either the topics covered do not concern them in any way, or only peripherally. The solution is to invite those for whom only a minority of topics are relevant just for the first 15 minutes or so of the meeting.

Tip no. 3: Do not exceed the time limit

The basic rule is you should stick to the defined schedule and not exceed the allocated time, which is one way in particular how to make attendees dislike such meetings. Moreover, once you start exceeding the given time, people stop paying attention and the meeting becomes highly ineffective.

Tip no. 4: Draw clear conclusions

Discussing only general topics at meetings without reaching any specific conclusions might be frustrating for the attendees. For meetings to be genuinely effective, they must lead to concrete conclusions and plans for the future.

 

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Article source Gallup Organization - Gallup delivers forward-thinking research, analytics, and advice to help leaders solve their most pressing problems.
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