How to Chair the Perfect Meeting

Preparing for a Meeting

Know how many people you want to attend the meeting and make sure everyone you want to attend receives an invitation. Ensure they respond to the invitation regardless of whether they can attend or not. This will make it easier when preparing documentation and other materials. Once you've determined how many people will be attending the meeting, preparing all materials including hand-outs, power point presentations, a meeting itinerary and other materials at least a week or two in advance will give you enough time to make changes or corrections. Having help at this stage can make this process much smoother. If you need to send materials to those attending, do so as soon as you have them done. Create extra copies in case people forget to bring them to the meeting.

Starting the Meeting

Before the meeting starts, make sure you introduce yourself. This can make people feel more comfortable and relaxed. In order to chair a successful meeting, make sure all audio/visual equipment is working before the meeting starts. This will prevent the meeting from starting and ending later than it should. Open the meeting by explaining why it's necessary to meet and what you hope to accomplish by the end. Ask that everyone introduce each other. If you're following a specific itinerary, begin talking about the first topic. After a few minutes, people will begin asking questions and offering their opinions. While this is what you want during a meeting, you will need to ensure that everyone stays on track so all topics are covered in the time allotted.

Keeping the Meeting on Schedule

If you feel a discussion has gone on long enough, ask that everyone move on to the next topic. You can always return to the topic if there's time after the other topics have been discussed. Most people will agree and will move on. If someone in the meeting refuses to move on to the next topic, you may need to let them know that they are free to discuss it later. Your role as the chair of the meeting is to make sure that the meeting is productive, enlightening and informative to all who attend. If there is a need to return to a topic that was discussed earlier, use your best judgment and return to an earlier discussion when necessary. Closing a Meeting Once you've gone over all the topics on the itinerary, you should close the meeting by summing up what was learned. Allow those in the meeting to provide any final remarks and then end the meeting. While chairing a meeting can be stressful, if you are able to maintain control over the discussion topics and the length of time people spend talking about them, you can accomplish everything on your agenda in one meeting.

Copyright (c) 2008 Sharon Alexander