A good business meeting can generate new ideas, revenues, energy or goodwill. A bad one can leave you wanting an immediate change of job or career. So, how can we ensure a meeting achieves the former, not the latter?
Three elements: There are three parts to a meeting ‘before’ ‘during’ and ‘after’ People tend to focus on the ‘during’ part but the planning stage (before) can make or break a meeting so be prepared.
Define the purpose of the meeting: Too many meetings have vague intentions: a weekly team meeting or progress update, for example. The best meetings are action-orientated, with clear aims or desired outcomes.
Limit the numbers: Generally, the greater the number of participants, the greater the risk of them losing energy. Think about whether people really need to be there.
Agendas are not just a formality: They should be distributed in time for participants to read them, and act on them. All participants should know exactly what preparations they need to do beforehand.
Set the stage: I think of this like a play or film. No matter the quality of the actors, plays or films don’t work unless they also have the right venue, set, lighting and sound. You should consider a range of ‘staging’ elements.
Stage management
How many airless meetings have you been to where participants stifle yawns throughout? Where glare gives you a headache or makes a screen illegible? Where there are continual interruptions as people check if the room is free?
These pitfalls all make participants perform below par.
Other pitfalls concern first impressions. Meeting in someone’s unused office or a coffee shop does not create the same impression as a room of the right size, in an impressive and convenient location, with good facilities.
If your office won’t create the right impression, consider renting meeting rooms by the day, half day or hour. Also think about:
- What type and size of room would fit your meeting type: boardroom, U-shape, or classroom-type?
- How should seating be arranged?
- Will participants need drinks or food?
Then there are the facilities. Check with everyone who will present at the meeting what they need: flip charts, whiteboard, somewhere to do printing or copying?
Again, meeting room providers cater for a wide range of requirements, but it’s best to ask in advance.
Another useful facility is videoconferencing. Meetings used to involve all participants sitting in the same room; now they don’t have to. Using high-quality videoconferencing can save thousands of pounds in travel costs and time.
Be prepared
In the eyes of a potential client or customer, the care you take over a meeting could illustrate the care you take over service. So, preparations like seating, catering and the room can be the difference between your company’s success and failure. Ignore them, and you may jeopardise the ‘during’ and ‘after’ parts of the meeting before it’s even begun.
Some say that people only remember 40 seconds of any one presentation. Do you have any interesting meeting facts or suggestions to make them more engaging? Let us know in the comment section or find us @RegusBlog and on Facebook
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Image courtesy of arjunkamloops via Flickr
