Are you having trouble making your regular team conferences a lot more efficient, whether you are holding them in person or over the internet? Fear not, for this article will provide you with ten ways that you can streamline and make each conversation with your co-workers a lot more effective.
Are you having trouble making your regular team conferences a lot more efficient, whether you are holding them in person or over the internet? Fear not, for this article will provide you with ten ways that you can streamline and make each conversation with your co-workers a lot more effective.
1. Assess Whether You Really Need to Hold a Meeting or Not
Unfortunately, a lot of employees seem to think that having to attend a ton of meetings makes them look more important in the eyes of others. The truth of the matter is that they just end up wasting a lot of time that they should have been spending finishing the most crucial tasks off of their lists.
2. Check if the Most Important People Are Actually Invited
According to an article on the website Project Management Hacks, inviting the wrong people to the conference can actually ruin the entire discussion. Thus, if you are the person who is organizing the meeting, make sure that you limit the number of people invited to just the most important people.
3. Prepare a List of Things to Discuss Before You Start
Going to a meeting that has no valid purpose for existing can be the most irritating thing you can subject your co-workers to, so make sure that you come in with an agenda that has everything that needs to be covered in that one discussion.
4. Make Sure That Side Conversations Do Not Get Out of Control
It is one of the most annoying things that can happen in a meeting, but it continues to happen regardless. Just remember to shut it down as soon as it starts – being lax could lead to a situation that gets out of your control.
5. Use Body Language and Facial Expressions to Amplify Your Message
Because you are going to be conversing with these people over the screen instead of in person, it is even more important that you try your best to get your message across through physical means. Thus, when conducting or attending BlueJeans corporate video meetings, make sure that you pay attention to how you appear to other people, especially when you are gesturing.
6. Start and End the Meeting on Time, No Matter What
Having trouble enforcing this rule? Try this tip from an article by Brian Tracy: do not repeat any information that latecomers missed. This way, they will soon understand that you do not make exceptions for people who break the rules.
7. Encourage People to Pitch In, But Do Not Force Them to Speak Up
However, just because you want everybody to pitch in their two cents does not mean that you should force them into speaking. Instead, treat it as an invitation to add to the conversation if they wish, but make sure that you make it clear that it is optional and not absolutely required. Otherwise, you might end up putting them on the spot instead of helping them have their say.
8. Do Not Allow Any Item to Go Unresolved
It can be tempting to just skip an item if you cannot decide on what to do about it, but really push for closure so that your conversation does not go to waste. Again, one way to ensure that this does not happen is to make sure that the people who can make those final decisions are actually present in the discussion, or else you will all be going nowhere fast.
9. Document Everything that Happens During the Conversation
A lot of people prefer to just sit back and relax while somebody else does all of the heavy lifting, but it can actually do every single participant a world of good to break out the pen and paper and take down notes while the discussion goes on. Better yet, assign somebody to handle the minutes of the meeting so that everybody has a copy of all the information that was shared during the assembly.
10. Make Sure That Everybody Has Something to Do Afterward
There is not much point to assembling everybody in one room just to share information if nobody will be doing anything about it after they leave. Make sure that everybody is assigned an important task, and make every single person agree to do it on a deadline. You may be surprised just how much more accountable people will become if they agreed to do it in the presence of everybody else involved in the decision-making process.
Hopefully, by following everything we have outlined in this list, you will have a much easier time getting everybody on track to doing things that will actually help the company boost its productivity and create more of a profit. Keep these tips in mind, and share them with your co-workers, too, so that they understand just exactly what you are trying to do to improve meetings not just for yourself, but for everybody involved in the company.