How to lead an effective meeting

People appreciate a meeting that finishes on time, stays on topic, and has a clear agenda.

Requesting the meeting, running the meeting, taking notes, and timekeeping should be done by separate people if possible, but one person can fulfill multiple roles if needed.

Before the meeting, make sure to:

• Request the meeting
• Assign someone to take notes

Running the meeting

• Start and finish on time
• Begin by reminding everyone the goal of the meeting
  • Write the meeting goal on a whiteboard if available
• Remember that the boss isn’t the boss of the meeting
  • If it’s your meeting, be polite but firm if the boss tries to overstep his or her bounds
• Make sure the meeting stays on topic
  • If the conversation strays, refocus the conversation
  • “That’s interesting, but I don’t think we’re progressing toward our goals here. If I could, I’d like to get back to the agenda.”
  • If a tangent item is important, ask the group whether they’d like to swap out a different agenda item to make room for it, or make plans to follow-up on it instead.
• Use non-verbal cues to make all attendees feel included
  • When people speak during meetings, they may tend to look at the facilitator rather than other group members. Avoid their eye contact and look at the other attendees, so that they do too.
• If certain people are dominating the conversation, ask others for ideas