Five Essential Practices to Make the Most from Your Meetings
By: Wasim R
Tags: Discussion, Thinking, Meetings, Collaboration, Remote Working

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Meetings provide a formal setting for conversations to take place and allow people to exchange ideas and information and to advance on various topics of discussion. With a higher percentage of people now working from remote locations than before, many of us find ourselves attending more formal meetings. Hallway discussions and cubicle conversations at workplaces have now been replaced by more formal online meetings.

Considering that many of us are now spending more time in those meetings, it’s important to revisit some basic strategies and tactics to help us make our meetings more productive and interesting.

While many articles on the topic of meetings focus on running effective meetings and provide tips for the meeting organizers, this article provides tips and strategies for all participants regardless of their specific role in the meeting. Again, the idea is that if we are spending a lot of our time in meetings, then we ought to get the most from our meetings and also to help the other participants achieve the same. Most experts agree that if we bring a number of people to discuss and meet then it’s important that we keep the meetings lean, on-point, accurate, and valuable.

Below are five practices that we can all use to help us get the most from our meetings.

Overcome any potential fears

Many people are fearful of talking or participating in meetings. The fear could be related to many issues, which include fear of asking questions, thinking of what others may think of our questions, a basic fear of speaking up especially when people don’t know others in the meeting, fear of saying the wrong things, or just plain fear of sounding ignorant about the subject. The fact is that we can’t expect to effectively participate in any meeting and be useful and productive when we are fearful and filled with anxiety. If you are in that group, then it’s important to address this issue head-on. There are a number of ways to get over your fear of speaking in general. Here are some of those:

Join organizations that can help you overcome your fear of public speaking. Organizations like Toastmasters International are known to teach public speaking and leadership skills and can help you overcome your mental barriers and become more confident speakers and communicators.

The more meetings you can join and participate in, the more opportunities you can have to practice speaking and sharing ideas. Start slowly and eventually you can tackle all your fears.

Knowing your self-worth can help you become more self-confident and shatter any barriers of speaking in public. Remember that when you are invited to a meeting, it’s because others are looking up to you for the knowledge that you may have or for you to offer your unique perspective. Reminding yourself of your value beforehand can instill you with more confidence and not get intimidated by the presence of others.

Meeting Preparation

The best way to ensure that a meeting is conducted properly is to know the facts beforehand. The more you prepare before going into a meeting, the less time you will spend interrupting others to learn the basics. While there is no harm to ask questions to learn facts in a meeting, doing basic homework can leave more time for valuable collaboration, brainstorming, discussions that can lead to better insights, and so on. Fewer interruptions can also prevent others from getting frustrated who already know the basic facts and instead are anxious to advance the meeting agenda by solving and creating.

In Amazon.com, for example, meeting organizers are expected to write a memo about six pages long that every participant first reads before the start of the meeting. This has numerous advantages one of which is to get people on “the same page” before the start of the meeting. This leads to better use of everyone’s time and increases the quality of the meetings.

Preparation can also help people get over the fear of “asking stupid questions”. The more you can learn about the subject before the meeting, the more confidence you can develop while walking into the meeting and the more intelligent questions you can ask. Advanced preparation can also let you think of ideas beforehand and can help you focus more on advancing the agenda and becoming more productive rather than focusing on yourself or trying to please others. When everyone gets to that state, a meeting can truly benefit from its participants.

Listen intently

One of the underlying objectives of any meeting is for participants to learn from it and to advance on the agenda of the meeting together with the other participants. That can’t be done by talking alone. To do so requires one to listen and to understand others and then to advance on the agenda and objectives of the meeting.

Listening actively can lead to learning more deeply about the meeting topic and its related issues and can help us validate our facts and assumptions, and bring more clarity to the overall discussion. This can help us contribute more effectively to the meeting. By paying attention to the speakers and understanding what they are stating in facts and their viewpoints also signals to other participants our respect for them and their ideas. This can encourage others to participate more freely and can help in the improvement of the overall atmosphere.

Listening actively, therefore, can also help you to build better relationships with meeting participants. Depending on the meetings, others will look forward to your attendance rather than avoiding the meetings that you attend.

Be Respectful

Meetings are forums where people come together to learn from each other and to contribute to the advancement of the agenda and objectives of the meeting. It’s important, therefore, to remind ourselves that if people have chosen to contribute their time to participate in meetings to share their experiences, perspectives, and knowledge then every person should be respectful of each other. This not only can help bring out the best ideas, insights, and perspectives from people but can also help everyone in increasing their knowledge as well.

People can be respectful of each other by:

Giving others the opportunity to speak and not interrupting them.

Not trying to dominate meetings by not letting others participate

Not discouraging others from asking questions,

Listening to others and their viewpoints

Not interrupting other people.

Start with an agenda and objectives

To ensure that meetings stay on track, it’s important to have clarity on both the agenda as well as the objectives of the meeting. While an agenda lays down the specific topics that will be covered in the meeting, the objectives articulate the potential outcomes expected from the meeting. Articulating an objective before the start of the meeting helps to keep the discussion on track toward achieving specific outcomes rather than risking the meeting to become a general discussion forum. Examples of meeting objectives may include brainstorming a minimum list of ideas to market a product or discuss and identify various business growth options.

Conclusion

Finally, let’s remember that nothing can be more useful than concluding the meeting after every person has had the opportunity to express their thoughts and ideas related to the topic while also meeting the objectives set out at the beginning of the meeting.