10 Ways to Enhance Your Meetings

Business leaders will often spend a large portion of their day in meetings. Some will even spend more than half of their work day in them.

With this being said, it is critical that you are efficient and productive with the meetings that you run. This will be valuable to your team's work performance, team culture, and the respect that you get from your colleagues.

There is a lot that goes into running an effective meeting. Here are 10 of my most important keys.

**Have a set of expectations for all of your meetings. Make sure that these are clear and review them from time to time. Three that I use are to be fully present during the meeting, be clear and concise with communication, and be willing to speak up and take chances.

**Have a clear intended outcome for the meeting. What do you want to get accomplished from this meeting? This needs to be clear to everyone and should drive the agenda for the meeting.

**Have a detailed agenda for the meeting. Send out this agenda before the meeting starts so that people have time to review it. It is your job in running the meeting to follow and work through this agenda. You may allow yourself some flexibility with it as well.

**Be thoughtful about who you invite to the meeting. Be respectful of your team member's time. If they don't have an active role in the meeting, then you may choose to send them an email with the summary.

**Start the meeting with celebrations. One way I like to start meetings is by opening them up to everyone for celebrations. This is where you can acknowledge and appreciate your co-workers. As the leader make sure to celebrate at least one person.

**Develop your public speaking skills. Are you clear and articulate with how you are presenting the information and running the meeting? Many leaders struggle with this. Pay attention to your body language, volume, pace, and tone. Also, if you are using filler words such as "um" and "uh." Practicing and reflecting can be valuable to improve this. Also, joining a public speaking group such as Toastmasters.

**Give others a chance to speak and present. This is a great way to empower others and make the meeting more interactive.

**Be punctual. Allow yourself to be a few minutes early to the meeting and aim to start it right on time. If it is consistently starting late then people will start to show up late.

**Acknowledge someone who shares. Thank the person that spoke and consider every idea that is presented.

**Have clear next steps. What is the next step that we are going to take as a result of this meeting? This needs to be clear and there needs to be a plan with delegated responsibilities going forward.

Think about your own meetings and what you can do to enhance them. Even small changes can make a big difference in how effective they are.

Note: If you are not the one that is running the meeting then allow yourself to be fully present during them and contribute what you are able to.