How to Run a Meeting: Tips for an Effective Team Meeting

An effective meeting is an exercise in time management, engagement, teamwork, and thorough planning. Prior to sending out invites, a facilitator makes sure the meeting agenda is ironclad, everyone attending will have something to contribute, and a decisive end goal is in mind for all parties.

Today effective meetings are just as possible remotely through laptops and smartphones as in person. The key is to plan ahead and have a clear purpose in mind, no matter the medium of the meeting itself.

Effective meetings help organizations and individuals unlock their potential to flourish. Expect to see these three benefits when you run meetings well:

1. 1. Greater productivity: Good meetings are productive meetings. If you plan and execute a meeting well, everyone will leave with the information they need to achieve any action items you assign to them. These sorts of meetings feel like part of everyone’s daily workflow rather than a distraction from other tasks. This allows employees and the teams they make up to work more efficiently, effectively, and productively.
2. 2. Increased engagement: Effective meeting facilitators know there are only certain circumstances in which a meeting is even necessary. When they plan one, they do so in the knowledge they can truly engage their entire team to work together and accomplish goals in concert. While a bad meeting might leave everyone uninterested and disengaged, a good meeting initiates all participants into the decision-making process.
3. 3. More clarity: Effective team meetings begin with clear agenda items and conclude with a decisive action plan. Rather than referencing nebulous goals and providing wishy-washy steps forward, a good meeting facilitator uses each get-together as an opportunity to give every member of their team more clarity.

Learning how to run a meeting well takes work, but it’ll pay off for both you and your team. Keep these tips in mind as you pursue a successful meeting management strategy:

• Ask if a meeting is necessary. Sometimes, a group discussion isn’t even essential. Unless a gathering feels absolutely necessary to align on goals, refrain from booking a meeting room in the first place. Do what you can to address needs through messaging, phone calls, and the like before insisting everyone comes together.
• Give everyone the ability to contribute. Treat each meeting you decide to call as a brainstorming session for all employees. Start with an icebreaker or small talk to ensure all team members feel comfortable and at ease with one another. Decide how you’d like people to contribute—perhaps you can go around the table one by one or maybe you can ask anyone with an idea to go up and write it on the whiteboard as soon as it strikes them.
• Make expectations clear. Set a clear list of agenda items before the meeting even begins, as well as ground rules for how people can expect to participate. Make it clear who the final decision-makers will be. Issue a policy for how people can contribute respectfully and in a timely manner.
• Practice active listening. You might feel pressure to talk the most as a meeting facilitator, but resist the urge when possible. Lay the groundwork for open, profitable conversation by asking questions and connecting peers who need to work together. Use open, calm body language to put your team at ease. Make sure introverts get as much time to speak as extroverts.
• Respect everyone’s time. As a facilitator, your role is to keep the conversation rolling until you punctually wrap it up at the assigned end time. No matter what the type of meeting, be mindful of everyone’s schedule. Some people might have next to no time before their next meeting starts, so ending early can also be courteous. Ensure people they can follow up via email or another form of messaging if they still have questions.
  
• Send people out with action items. As your meeting time ends, everyone needs a clear picture of what to do with the information. Give all your meeting participants clear action items to conclude your time together. Issuing these sorts of clear next steps helps everyone remain calibrated on priorities and goals.
• Summarize your progress. At the end of the meeting, summarize all the progress you made. You can either take meeting minutes as a facilitator or assign a note-taker to keep track of deadlines, needs, and other feedback participants mentioned in the meeting. These meeting notes help all invitees remember what they learned and what they still need to accomplish after the get-together comes to a close.

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