OFW guide: How to keep office meetings interesting

Office meetings will always be a part of work. However, boring meetings that lack focus are a waste of everyone's time. According to the Small Business section of the Houston Chronicle news site, Effective meetings should serve a specific purpose, keep the employees engaged, encourage participation and leave the employees with a clear plan of action." The article said meetings should leave employees with a sense of accomplishment to make them feel that they spent their time wisely. This will also make them look forward to the next meeting. The financial news site Inc.com said most of the time, meetings bear no fruit and add to the multitude of tasks that employees have to accomplish.

 

Employees are pulled out for long hours, hampering the production of the department and affecting the company's revenue.

 

Inc.com said there is no sense in keeping employees away from work for a couple of hours and ending a meeting having more work for them.

 

To avoid this and make meetings short and productive, the information site “Hongkiat” listed six tips:

 

(1) Put a time limit

 

Make sure that meetings have a specified amount of time dedicated to them. This time limit must be observed not only by the attendees but also by the one who presides over the meeting.

 

Doing this gives the attendees a sense of time and helps them realize the importance of the meeting.

 

This also reduces the chances that a discussion will go off topic because everyone wants to discuss the relevant information in the shortest amount of time possible. A good time limit for a meeting is one hour.

 

(2) Keep 'yes men' out

 

A meeting is composed of the speaker and partcipants who usually do nothing but nod and agree to every point that the speaker makes.

 

You do not want this in your meeting. What you want are people who are brave enough to go against the speaker but in a civil manner.

 

This fuels better brainstorming and discussion, where "good" ideas are developed to become "great" ideas.

 

(3) Stick to the agenda

 

It's so easy to derail a conversation in a meeting by asking questions that the speaker may answer with irrelevant information.

 

This does not only waste the time of the attendees but also gets nothing solved.

 

To avoid this, remind the speaker that he is going off topic. Better yet assign someone to screen questions to see which are relevant and those that are not.

 

(4) Take ownership of your ideas

 

A lot of people come up with brilliant ideas especially during meetings but the problem is they usually are just ideas.

 

If you have an idea, take responsbility and research more information before you present it in a meeting. Don't just wait for someone else to execute it as this will most likely never happen.

 

This makes you more reliable than someone who pitches a lot of ideas but gets nothing done.

 

(5) Have everything clarified

 

If you don't understand something or you think you heard what the speaker said differently, don't be shy to ask him to repeat himself or clarify the issue.

 

It's better to make sure that everything is crystal clear before adjourning. You might be doing other participants a favor if they are too shy to ask for clarifications.

 

(6) Record everything

 

Minutes of meetings accomplish three things: Who should do what, when should it be done, and ensuring that the assigned employees actually do their tasks.

 

It also gives a reviewable record for participants who may have forgotten something, whether a major or minor detail. - Andrei Medina, VVP, GMA News