Meeting just for meeting's sake. If you are in this group then you are a busy person and you totally feel me!
If you are planning on pulling together people make sure the reasons you are meeting are important and need to be handled face to face. 👩💻🧑💻👨💻👩💼🧑💼👨💼
Here are some tips for making those meetings effective:
Provide an agenda ahead of time. The last two things on your agenda should be other concerns and next steps. Make sure the right people are in the room. 👍
Start on time⌚️
Take minutes of your meeting that will be disseminated to everyone after the meeting concludes. Type as you go or have a notetaker type as you go so you aren't doing double work 📋
Do not allow people to derail your agenda. "I can tell that discussing X is very important to you today. Let's get through the agenda and circle back to that at the end of the meeting." 🙀
Create action steps and capture them in the minutes. If you do not assign people to handle the tasks you discussed everyone will assume YOU will do them.....as if you're not busy enough 😳
Recap the meeting and action steps. "Ok, so to be clear let's state what we are each going to do as a follow-up and when we anticipate those things will be complete." ✔️✔️✔️
End on time (or early). If you aren't finished say "I know we had a hard stop at X. We still have a few things to discuss. I am available to continue the meeting if anyone has another commitment please feel free to leave and you can get caught up when I send the minutes. If anyone feels we should discuss as a large group we can set another meeting." Obviously, if it is time-sensitive you wouldn't offer the second. 🎯
Remember the person who wanted to derail your meeting? Don't forget to honor his/her concerns under other items. If you run out of time offer a meeting with him/her or if it's not urgent add it to the top of the agenda of your next meeting. Try this at your next meeting and let me know how it goes!
If you would like to know more about how I help educational leaders like you achieve their goals, schedule a free strategy session here.
In friendship, love, and leadership,
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