There are some essential steps to make sure you’re prepared for a successful meeting. Preparation is essential to success in meetings, whether it’s for a planning session or a review of your employees.
Create your agenda and also send any reading material that you would like participants to read in advance. Notifying them prior to the meeting helps ensure that everyone will have a good understanding of the agenda and will be able to participate effectively in the meeting. You can include them in your invitation or send them out via internal communications. Be aware of what you consider essential to read and what’s useful to have.
Anticipate any obstacles that may be encountered during the meeting and develop a strategy for how to handle them. Waiting to raise these issues in the meeting itself can result in the waste of meeting time as everyone tries to get up to speed on a problem that could have been addressed earlier.
Don’t forget to put in place an effective system for recording and sharing minutes of meetings and other documents. This will keep the momentum following the meeting continues and ensure that all participants are aware of what was discussed and decided in the meeting.
Finally, make sure you have a list with the most important points that will help everyone leave the meeting feeling confident about what the next steps will be for moving the discussion or moving forward. This is a great way to end the meeting and let everyone feel that they are part of a united team capable of achieving the goals.