One great way to improve your meetings

Have an agenda. Now I know what you are thinking, I have an agenda. Most likely you have an intended program for your meeting. You have a list of things you want to accomplish. You intend to gain information and ask some relevant questions. And yes these are good things to accomplish. How many could be accomplished by e-mail? Face to face is a great tool, but only if you use it correctly.

Getting people together for a meeting is useful if that time is not better spent working elsewhere. A face to face is a great tool to share information quickly and with fewer miscommunications if the information transmitted is short. For detailed communication send a message. Your meetings need an agenda that cannot be accomplished better by alternate methods.

If you feel your team is fragmenting and failing to communicate well, have a meeting with the agenda of socializing, feel free to discuss business but remember your reason for meeting. If you feel out of the loop have a meeting with the purpose of getting everybody back on the same page. Meetings are useful tools for reminding a team that they are a team. Meetings fail to accomplish their goals when the agenda is better accomplished by an e-mail.

The best meeting you will ever have is one who’s agenda is in line with the benefits of a face to face.