Having extra people on your planning team can be both a blessing and a nightmare. Learning how to improve your team meetings can help keep your planning team on track to achieving your goals as your event nears. Here are a few tried-and-true steps to take.
How to improve your team meetings
Choose one messaging tool.
To start off, choose one primary method of communication for your team. Whether it’s email, Google Hangouts, iMessage, or Skype, have a go-to platform that everyone knows to check. We’re huge fans of Slack, which probably has an integration for whichever platform you’re already using. Less time reading email is something we all want, right?
Set ground rules.
AAMC recommends not catching up latecomers on what they missed, as it sends the message that it is okay to be late to meetings. Before your meeting, decide on what is expected of each team member and procedures, such as what to do if one person can’t make it.
Create an agenda.
Send an agenda out at least one day before the meeting, if you can. That gives everyone time to contact the organizer if they would like to add an item to the agenda. Even better, see if you can estimate how much time you want to spend discussing each item to make sure your meeting doesn't run long. This keeps everyone accountable and helps to minimize unnecessary discussion.
Check the time.
Do you really need an hour-long meeting? Look at your agenda and think about how much time you will really need to get through everything.
According to Popforms, you should always end meetings on time, as constraints breed creativity. Think about how efficient you work when under a deadline. Constraints can help. For example, “Name as many four-letter words as you can that end in the letter e” is a more difficult task than “Name as many four-letter words as you can that end in -ake.”
Check in with everyone.
The beginning of the meeting is the best time to go around and give everyone a chance to talk about what they’re working on and potential hurdles they’re facing. This is also a good time to ask questions and offer support. It may also be helpful to ask everyone what they want to get out of the meeting.
Assign administrative roles.
Who will lead the conversation? Who will watch the time? Make sure to have one person in charge of taking minutes, even if everyone is present for the meeting. Send minutes out as soon as possible after the meeting is over so everyone can get to work.
Set action items
At the end of every meeting, you’ll want to summarize your discussion and set action items or deliverables to be completed before the next meeting. Assign tasks, e.g. who’s in charge of sending out RFP’s, calling former sponsors, tweeting, etc., to specific members for accountability.
Survey your team members.
Ask your team what they like and don’t like about how meetings are ran and for suggestions on how to improve them. With your team members’ feedback, change up your meetings to see what makes a difference.
Experiment.
Don’t be afraid to switch it up! For example, you could try a meeting where everyone stands to increase the urgency of ending the meeting on time. You could also ask everyone to put their phones in a box at the start of the meeting.
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