Meetings are regularly held within organizations across all industries, and they are a good way to communicate goals and share ideas with team members. But ineffective meetings lead to a loss of productivity, costing your organization valuable time and money. With a few team building strategies, you can increase the effectiveness of your meetings.
Sharing information is essential for your organization’s success, and one way to do that is through meetings. The following articles offer some team building strategies for effective meetings within your organization: 10 Reasons Why Effective Meetings Are So Important, 5 Ways to Make Meetings Work for You and Your Team and Principles for Effective Meetings.
Meetings are a great way to share information through all levels of leadership within your organization, and with some team building strategies, including those listed below, as well as the 6 Principles The Build High Performance Teams leadership clinic, you can ensure your meetings are effective.
Reduce costs and increase productivity. According to 10 Reasons Why Effective Meetings Are So Important, ineffective meetings waste discretionary time, talent and money for your organization. By increasing the effectiveness of meetings, your organization will benefit from decreased costs, increased engagement and productivity, increased accountability and reduced stress, among several other benefits.
Build a strong foundation for meetings. Most employees have attended an unproductive meeting or two throughout their careers, and according to 5 Ways to Make Meetings Work for You and Your Team, meetings do not need to be held unless they will be more productive than any other task your team members could be focusing on. For an effective use of time, meetings should both help your team members build relationships with one another, and to communicate and achieve results. If other tasks are more pressing or more productive for your employees, skip the meeting and find a better way to communicate with your team members.
Create a path for success. According to Principles for Effective Meetings, your meeting should be limited to team members who have a reason to be there. Attendees should understand what they can contribute, and the meeting should have specific answers for the meeting’s purpose, intended outcomes, what decisions need to be made, the questions that need to be answered, and the intended impact.
Offer attendees a clear purpose. 5 Ways to Make Meetings Work for You and Your Team goes on to say that to keep your meeting on track, be clear about its purpose before it starts. Heading in for the meeting, team members should have a clear understanding of the goal of the meeting and the decisions that need to be made by the meeting’s end. Keep your employees on track throughout the duration of the meeting, which can be achieved by the PAPR (parking lot, affirm, park it, and refocus) method:
- Create a “parking lot” space to record discussion items and new ideas that do not directly contribute to the meeting.
- Affirm and acknowledge new ideas and their value.
- Keep on track with time by “parking” those ideas into the parking lot.
- Refocus your team back to the matter at hand.
By focusing on these team building strategies, you can increase the effectiveness of meetings, thereby increasing productivity, saving money and reducing stress among team members.
For a parody on live conference call meetings, you might enjoy this video.
Copyright TIGERS Success Series, Inc. by Dianne Crampton
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