Meetings have always taken a large part of the average manager’s week Meetings have always taken a large part of the average manager’s week. The increased number of teams means that meetings are even more frequent today.

Planning, Conducting, and Recording Meetings To learn how to Plan a meeting. Lead a meeting. Be an effective participant in meetings. Take good meeting minutes. Network effectively.

Planning, Conducting, and Recording Meetings Start by answering these questions: What planning should precede a meeting? When I’m in charge, how do I keep a meeting on track? What decision-making strategies work well in meetings?

Planning, Conducting, and Recording Meetings Start by answering these questions: How can I be an effective meeting participant? What should go in meeting minutes? How can I use informal meetings with my boss to advance my career? Do virtual meetings require special consideration?

Types of Meetings Parliamentary Staff Team One-on-One Follow formal procedure; use Robert’s Rules of Order. Staff Typically are held to announce new policies and products, answer questions, share ideas, and motivate employees. Team Bring team members together to brainstorm and create. One-on-One Are perhaps the most common kind of meeting. Business, nonprofit, and government organizations hold several types of meetings. While other meetings can be held, these four are the more common in business. Other kinds of meetings can include sales meetings, conventions, and retreats.

Purposes of Meetings Share information. Brainstorm ideas. Evaluate ideas. Make decisions. Create a document. Motivate members. Meetings may have one or more of these purposes. When meetings combine two or more purposes, it’s useful to make the purposes explicit to attendees. To keep everyone on the same page, consider using an agenda.

Help participants deal with issues in a timely and thorough manner. As Chair of Meetings Help participants deal with issues in a timely and thorough manner. Make ground rules explicit. Pay attention to people and the process at hand. If conflict gets out of hand, focus attention on the group process. Meeting chairs should help participants deal with the issues in a way that is both timely and adequately thorough. To do so, pay attention to both task and to process.

To Use Standard Agendas Understand what the group has to deliver and when. Identify the problem. Gather information and share it. Establish criteria. Generate alternate solutions. Measure alternatives against criteria. Choose the best solution. Standard agendas help meeting attendees to understand the goals of a meeting, as well as how they might be achieved.

To be an Effective Participant Prepare for meetings. Speak when you have the chance. Make notes so that you can be succinct. While speaking Show that you’ve done your homework. Link your comment to that of someone in power. Find an ally ahead of time and agree to acknowledge each other’s contributions at the meeting. Be prepared when going to a meeting. Do your research, and make notes so that when you speak, you can be complete but succinct. In small meetings, people who speak early and often are usually seen as the most influential, but even in larger meetings, a single, fluent comment can be memorable.

Meeting Minutes Include Decisions reached. Action items, where someone needs to implement or follow up on something. Open issues—issues raised but not resolved. Who was present, wording of motions and amendments, and vote results. Recording in minutes what has been discussed in a meeting is a good way to keep a record and to remind attendees what was accomplished and what needs to be done.

Virtual Meeting Caveats Be aware of the limitations of your channel. E-mail may seem more brusque. Audio meetings lack nonverbal cues. Videoconferences only show what the lens picks up. Technology can fail. When you meet electronically rather than in person, you lose the informal interactions possible in face-to-face meetings. So, build in opportunities to meet in person where possible, especially on important projects. Also, recognize that there are limitations to using video equipment, including how an image is presented and whether that equipment works properly.