Meetings are conducted in every corporate setting for team members to get together and talk about business issues. They are opportunities for members of the team or the company to exchange ideas and discuss objectives. These meetings can be transcribed into accurate notes with the help of a business transcription service for future reference. There is a general concept that meetings are unnecessary and could be boring and a waste of time. However, if you hold an effective meeting, you can fulfil your goals and also save time, money, and talent.
According to an article by Tom Cooney and Crystal Faulkner who are partners with MCM CPAs & Advisors, a CPA and advisory firm, healthy conflicts can improve employee engagement in a meeting.
Encouraging healthy conflicts helps to rejuvenate meetings and converts mediocre meetings to great meetings that involve more employee engagement. The main purpose of meetings is to keep the circles connected and resolve problems. The best teams and the best companies in the world thrive because of healthy conflict and not because of smooth sailing. Productive conflict during a meeting never involves personal attacks. It leads to lively debate that helps to find the right answers, makes the meeting lively and helps to find a good path for the organization. Healthy conflict helps to identify ideas, opportunities, and points of friction, as well as makes team processes better.
Some of the other tips that can improve meetings are:
- Come up with good questions: When meetings become very predictable, make sure to come up with new and innovative questions. For example, ask questions like What’s slowing down progress? What could we do more effectively? What, or who, are we avoiding? How could we improve our processes? and so on. This makes meetings more engaging, helps to find new opportunities and above all, makes the meeting more interesting.
- Stick to the agenda: Make an agenda before the meeting and make sure that the meeting starts on time. Majority of the meeting time should be focused on solving problems and discussing opportunities. It is important for your team to feel confident in sharing their point of view. After the discussion, the next step is to move into problem solving mode. Problem solving takes practice and diligence and the most important thing is to decide on the course of action. Make sure that no one leaves the meeting without some type of solution.
- Give time for engagement: In the meeting make sure that there is employee engagement. Do not think that people in the room visualize the meeting going in the same way you do. Set your expectation before time and make sure that everyone is prepared so that everyone can share their opinion during the meeting. If people are not speaking up, encourage them to do so by asking for their point of view.
- Appreciate acknowledgement: Speaking up might be hard for some people. Therefore encourage them when they do so, and ensure they know their feedback is valuable by taking it into consideration and following up with them.
Meetings are an important part of managing a group of employees. Following the above-mentioned tips will help conduct a meeting efficiently. Today, businesses have various types of meetings like video conferencing, online meeting etc and these are an important activity in a business setup. Once the meeting is over, it is important to take note of all important points. With the assistance of digital transcription agencies, any business meeting can be converted into accurate notes that can be stored and accessed later. It helps in quick decision making, and also boosts productivity and efficiency.
