Tips to having effective meetings

Everyone wants to run their business effectively and command respect and attention from their employees. One place that can get out of control is your meetings. Meetings are a time to go an hammer out some ideas for the company and to get everyone on the same page. Some meetings will go awry and you will end up struggling to gain control over it and to get your employees to listen to what you have to say. Whatever meeting you are dealing with, you need to be prepared for the meeting and you need to come in and be the leader that everyone else knows you are and can be. Here are some tips to having effective meetings.

Meet when it's needed
When you are meeting too often it starts to wear on everyone. Do you really need to meet? Can a simple email or phone call suffice? Try not to burden people with too many meetings because it does take them away from their work and can make it challenging for them to keep up with the other assignments that they need to accomplish.

Agenda
Make a list of the information that you want to talk about in the meeting. Having an agenda will keep everyone on task and you can quickly end conversations and things that cause you to stray from the agenda and time constraints that you have. Always plan out the meeting ahead of time so you can limit the amount of time it takes to have the meeting. Everyone has other things that they would much rather work on so you need to do your research ahead of time. Have specific goals written down and make sure that they are being communicated effectively in the meeting.

Speak Up
You are the manager and ultimately in control of the business. You have to make your voice heard. Speak up during the meeting so your staff knows that you are in control and that they answer to you. When people start to wander off topic, you need to be the one that stops that from happening and bringing people right back to your agenda to stay on topic and on time.

Start On Time
To make a statement, always start on time. If your employees are late, let them embarrass themselves by walking in late and having the room turn. You need to make it known what time the meeting will start and what time the employees are expected to be there. Not only does this get your employees there on time, it also helps to reduce the amount of wasted time in the meeting when everyone has to sit around and wait for other employees to get to the meeting.

Resolve issues
The point of having meetings is to resolve issues. Do not let an issue slip through the cracks and take the time to address it and resolve it. You need to bring it up at the end of the meeting if this is something that is pending from other meetings and they still haven't been solved. When issues go unresolved, they will eat away at you or another employee. Do not just talk about things, always make sure you are resolving things.

Stay on Time
You must control the time. This is vital to effective meetings as there are so many companies that do not watch he time and end up talking about the same thing for an hour. You all have other job duties that need your attention and time and you need to get back to them as soon as possible. Use a timer if you need but do not let time get away from you!