How do you deal with common meeting challenges and pitfalls?

1 Define the purpose and agenda

Before you invite anyone to a meeting, you should have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will do it. A meeting without a purpose and agenda is likely to go off-track, lose focus, and create confusion. A meeting with a purpose and agenda is more likely to engage participants, stay on time, and deliver results. Therefore, you should define the specific goals, topics, and outcomes of your meeting, and share them with your attendees in advance. You should also allocate a realistic amount of time for each agenda item, and stick to it during the meeting.

3 Set the tone and ground rules

The way you start and conduct your meeting can have a significant impact on the atmosphere and dynamics of your meeting. You should set the tone and ground rules for your meeting to ensure that everyone feels welcome, respected, and engaged. For example, you can start your meeting by greeting your attendees, introducing yourself and others, reviewing the purpose and agenda, and clarifying the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved. You can also establish some ground rules for your meeting, such as asking everyone to mute their microphones when not speaking, respecting each other's opinions, and avoiding distractions and interruptions.

4 Facilitate discussion and decision-making

One of the main roles of a meeting leader is to facilitate discussion and decision-making among the participants. You should use your skills and techniques to guide the conversation, elicit input, resolve conflicts, and reach consensus. For example, you can use open-ended questions, paraphrasing, summarizing, and probing to encourage participation, clarify understanding, and identify key points. You can also use voting, ranking, or prioritizing methods to facilitate decision-making, and ensure that everyone agrees on the criteria, options, and outcomes.

5 Monitor and manage time

Time is a precious and limited resource for any meeting. You should monitor and manage time effectively to ensure that you cover all the agenda items, address all the issues, and achieve all the goals within the allotted time. You should also respect the time of your participants, and avoid starting late, ending early, or running over. To monitor and manage time, you can use a timer, a clock, or an agenda tracker to keep track of the progress and pace of your meeting. You can also use cues, signals, or reminders to alert your participants of the time limits, transitions, or wrap-ups.

6 Follow up and evaluate

The end of a meeting is not the end of the process. You should follow up and evaluate your meeting to ensure that the outcomes are implemented, the actions are taken, and the feedback is collected. You should send a summary of the meeting, including the key points, decisions, and action items, to all the participants and relevant parties as soon as possible after the meeting. You should also assign responsibilities, set deadlines, and monitor the status of the action items, and provide support or guidance as needed. You should also solicit feedback from your participants, either verbally or through a survey, to evaluate the effectiveness and satisfaction of your meeting, and identify areas for improvement.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?