Best Ways to Run a Business Meeting

Best Ways to Run a Business Meeting

Introduction: Business meetings are often an essential part to running a company efficiently and smoothly. The purpose of most business meetings is to get everyone attending up to date on what is occurring within the company, and what changes may need to be made for the future. However, often times, the point of the business meetings can become forgotten and can lead to more confusion among team members. In order to keep these meetings both focused and short, they will need to be run efficiently. There are a few things that you should remember, for your next meeting that will help you run it much better.

Clarity: You should make the point of the meeting apparent from the moment that you start the meeting.

Guide the discussion towards this objective and ensure that your team does not stray far from the objective. Consider addressing any other concerns, aside from concerns towards the meeting goal, after the meeting or during another meeting. By discussing exactly what you need to, you will create much more efficient and focused meetings. Rather than creating confusion among your team members, each member will be on the same understanding of why everybody is meeting.

Focus: Once you have determined what you are meeting for, make sure to stay focused on that point. If there are multiple points that need to be made, address the most important points first. Anything that can be, or should be, done outside of the meeting needs to be addressed at another time. If there are important concerns, unrelated to the meeting topic, ask for your team members to write them down and communicate them with you or other team members at a later time. Utilize a time of the week where all of your team members are available and are not distracted by other projects.

Time: Business meetings tend to run longer than originally planned. This is sometimes due to the questions and concerns that people normally have, a misunderstanding of the discussion presented, or the fact that the meeting started later than scheduled. The first thing that you will want to ensure is that your meetings begin exactly when they are supposed to begin. As you prepare for your meetings, think of the needs of your team, and areas of your topics that may create a misunderstanding; try to simplify these areas so that your members can understand them the first time through.

Conclusion: Running a business meeting can be confusing at first, especially when involved with people who are very creative and have different ideas. However, as time goes on, you will get better at running meetings and accomplishing the goals of each meeting. By the end of your meetings, you want to make sure that each team member understands what the point of the meeting was and what needs to be done after the meeting. By accomplishing these two things, you will know whether you will need to adjust the way that you approach meetings.

Mark Angelo co-founded the Investment Manager in August 2009 and two affiliated investment managers.