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Effective Meeting: in a Minute?

Do you want to know how to manage an effective meeting in a minute? This is one of our Manage in a Minute pages. These contain essential tips on fundamental management topics. No fuss or side-tracks, they get straight to the point. Here, in a series of bullet points which can be read in a minute (ish!), are some essential tips on how to run an effective meeting.

An Effective Meeting: the Basics

Before the meeting:

Ensure you really need the meeting;

Set specific, realistic, achievable goals;

Prepare and distribute an agenda and any (necesssary) supporting documentation;

Issue a start and finish time for the meeting;

Estimate time for agenda items in advance;

Invite only key people, not everybody you can think of;

Be prepared!

During the Meeting

Start on time;

Keep the group on track;

Make decisions, don't just air views;

Summarize and record decisions;

Keep people involved - remember they are there for a reason;

Control dominating characters;

End on time.

After the Meeting

Send minutes to participants;

Follow-up on agreed actions;

Debrief with key figures;

Assess the content of the meeting - what came out of it;

Assess the process of the meeting - what needs to change from it.

Manage Both Process and Content

The content of the meeting is:

Why the meeting has been called;

What needs to be be done;

Who should do it;

When should it be done;

What information is needed.

The process of the meeting is ensuring that:

People's interactions are managed;

Contributions are shared around the group;

Agreement is active not passive;

Digressions are managed;

Decisions are made using fair decision making processes.

An Effective Meeting in a Minute?

Meetings should really be about the meeting of minds, from which purposeful results follow. Hopefully these ideas will get you on the way to running effective meetings.

If you do have the time to read more on this topic, follow the full discussion in our article: Effective Meetings. Or look at other detailed discussions on some of our related articles on Management Tips.

Still pressed for time? Follow this link for the full list of Manage in a Minute pages.

Go to Site Map from Effective Meeting in a Minute.