Nothing is more frustrating than sitting in endless meetings, feeling like conversations are going around in circles. However, it doesn’t have to be this way! Here are our pro tips to keep your meetings on track, without adding more hours to your day.
1. Ensure your meeting notes are well organised
Keep your meeting notes simple, a few bullet points on each topic is more than sufficient. If you try to detail too many notes you risk creating confusion and clutter when you review them later. Keep notes in one section of your page and actions on another section. Check out our Meeting Notebooks.
Explore our collection of award-winning planners and journals that encourage leadership, goal-kicking, passion and motivation, with elegant designs that can be personalised.
2. Ask open-ended questions to promote collaboration
If you keep asking your team the same questions, you’ll get the same answers! Ask your colleagues questions to get them thinking in a different mindset. This could include:
- ‘If we were our competition, how would we beat us?’
- ‘If we only had $10 to execute this idea what would we spend it on?’
- ‘If we had to execute this idea in 24 hours, how would we do it?’
3. Mix up the type of meeting
Avoid stale meetings by mixing up the location. Instead, try walking meetings, quick standing meetings, meetings in an unusual place (a nearby park, museum or cafe). Plenty of local libraries let you book meeting rooms too!
4. Delegate note-taking in meetings
Gift your colleagues a Meeting Notebook and delegate a different person to take and circulate notes each meeting. This helps people stay engaged, encourages collaboration and shares the responsibility.
5. Start each meeting with something a bit different
Break the ice of your meeting and increase energy with a two-minute introduction. This could be approaching a different colleague each meeting to tell a unique story about themselves or organising a fun quiz about your companies history. Did you know you can run polls in Google hangouts?
6. Filters are your friend in video meetings
In back to back Zoom calls? Add the Snap Camera widget to your browser and utilise their humorous filters to keep your colleagues grinning.