meetings
23.03.2016

Five tips to make meetings more efficient

No one will deny the fact that meetings are an essential part of every office routine. It may be true that less information get lost during personal conference – but instead, a lot of time goes to waste. Therefore, we offer you five tips to make your future meetings more efficient that they have ever been.

This may sound familiar to you: More and more meetings pile up in your calendar, and before you now it, half a day went by and no actual work got done. This problem is not a matter of business size, as it is known in the smallest to the largest companies.

In this article, we want to share with you five tricks – approved by our editorial office – that will help you to conduct less time-consuming and nerve-wrecking meetings. One litte piece of advice given ahead: It’ all a matter of preparation.

Briefing yourself ahead of meetings helps you achieve results faster. (Picture: Evernine)

1. Read the agenda

This may sound obvious – but lot of people don’t do it anyway. If there is some information given prior to a meeting, then you should definitely read it. Meetings will last half as long if every colleague informs himself about the main topics beforehand – and lead to better results as well.

1. Read the agenda

This may sound obvious – but lot of people don’t do it anyway. If there is some information given prior to a meeting, then you should definitely read it. Meetings will last half as long if every colleague informs himself about the main topics beforehand – and lead to better results as well.

If there’s no agenda, feel free to go ahead and ask for it proactively. Even a few bullet points can already be very insightful and help to prepare yourself for a discussion.

2. Question the reason for your attendance

“Do I really have to take part?” – This is the question you should ask your self every time before you blindly confirm your participation in a meeting. It happens very often that more colleagues than actually required are asked to attend in a meeting.

If you can’t figure out why you should be part of a meeting, then don’t hesitate to ask. There’s nothing more annoying than realizing right after a conference that your attendance was absolutely unnecessary.

If there’s no agenda, feel free to go ahead and ask for it proactively. Even a few bullet points can already be very insightful and help to prepare yourself for a discussion.

2. Question the reason for your attendance

“Do I really have to take part?” – This is the question you should ask your self every time before you blindly confirm your participation in a meeting. It happens very often that more colleagues than actually required are asked to attend in a meeting.

If you can’t figure out why you should be part of a meeting, then don’t hesitate to ask. There’s nothing more annoying than realizing right after a conference that your attendance was absolutely unnecessary.

3. Know your role in every meeting

3. Know your role in every meeting

In advance of every conference, you should be aware of which role you’re going to play – and therefore, what you’re responsible for. It makes a huge difference wether you serve as a leader, mediator or just a discussant.

Ideally, every attendee knows what is expected of him. This leads to way more targeted preparation – thus better results will be achieved much faster. It’s always worth to communicate task allocation adequately.

Thoughtful preparation is the name of the game. (Picture: Evernine)

4. Prepare a cheat sheet

You read the agenda, you know what will be the main issues. The next step should be to determine what exactly you can contribute to the discussion. During a meeting, there’s not too much time to think about this.

That’s why a little cheat sheet can help a lot. Write down just a few notes about the most important topics you want to address. This way, no information will get lost in the heat of the moment.

4. Prepare a cheat sheet

You read the agenda, you know what will be the main issues. The next step should be to determine what exactly you can contribute to the discussion. During a meeting, there’s not too much time to think about this.

That’s why a little cheat sheet can help a lot. Write down just a few notes about the most important topics you want to address. This way, no information will get lost in the heat of the moment.

5. Don’t forget about presentation

Let’s be honest: If you keep talking for ages without any interesting presentation, you will lose most of your audience in just a few minutes. Whenever this happens in a meeting, it means nothing but a huge waste of time.

You can improve any talk with some catchy material. Nowadays, we’re lucky enough to have modern presentation systems that make it possible to integrate pictures, statistics or videos via notebook, tablet or smartphone. That way, your colleagues will not only understand even difficult topics more easily, but they will also be able to recall the information way longer.

This article is based on a press release by wePresent, October 2016.

Source of cover picture: wePresent

5. Don’t forget about presentation

Let’s be honest: If you keep talking for ages without any interesting presentation, you will lose most of your audience in just a few minutes. Whenever this happens in a meeting, it means nothing but a huge waste of time.

You can improve any talk with some catchy material. Nowadays, we’re lucky enough to have modern presentation systems that make it possible to integrate pictures, statistics or videos via notebook, tablet or smartphone. That way, your colleagues will not only understand even difficult topics more easily, but they will also be able to recall the information way longer.

This article is based on a press release by wePresent, October 2016.

Source of cover picture: wePresent

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