How to run a meeting

If you have any type of leadership responsibility, then sooner or later you’ll have to think about how to run a meeting.

When you’re first asked or required to run a meeting, you’ll probably feel a bit anxious. But it can be a bit like giving a presentation, with more experience you don’t get so nervous. But what will help is having some understanding of the dynamics of effective meetings, so read on for some meeting tips ….

• Formal and informal meetings

Meetings can be formal or informal, and can be conducted for different purposes. If you were a company director, then you would be attending much more formal Board meetings that require motions to be put forward and seconded, with strict control maintained by the chair.

Then there are brainstorming type meetings, which tend to be more informal and free-flowing in nature, so as to encourage creative thinking.

However, in the workplace if you are running the weekly or monthly team meeting, then the tone of your meetings will be somewhere in between formal and informal. The meeting will certainly need to have some structure to it so that time is not wasted, but it will also be somewhat relaxed so as to encourage participation.

• Meeting pitfalls

There are meetings you’ve probably attended that you felt were a total waste of time. This may have been because the meeting was poorly chaired and not properly controlled, or perhaps the meeting was unnecessary with no clear purpose to it. Or perhaps participants had not prepared adequately for the meeting and therefore could not make meaningful contributions

• Define the meeting purpose

When thinking about how to run a meeting, one of the core and fundamental questions to ask yourself is what you are seeking to achieve. There may be one objective to the meeting, or there could be several – depending upon what items may be on your meeting agenda.

For example, a meeting agenda agenda item could be designed to:

• Provide information, for example about a forthcoming change or a status report on a project
• Make a decision as a team
• Seek people’s opinions on an issue
• Solve a problem
• Formulate an action plan
• Evaluate progress

For some guidelines on how to conduct the meeting, see Meeting Tips

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