One of the biggest time wasters of all is an unnecessary or poorly run meeting. If you want to dramatically improve your time management skills, learn how to have productive meetings.
An Example of Bad Meeting Habits
Karen is the Operations Manager in a large corporation. Every Wednesday morning, her CEO has a managers’ meeting.
This is what usually happens
- The agenda is circulated the afternoon before, which means the managers have little time to prepare.
- The meeting always starts late as the CEO is prepared to wait for latecomers. In fact, he’s often late himself.
- A couple of the managers tend to waffle on. And rhe CEO who chairs the meeting is not assertive enough to keep them on track. He’s also a ‘waffler’.
- Most of the managers sit there, bored out of their brains for the majority of the time. They also get stressed as they feel they are wasting time while listening to the wafflers.
- As the CEO does not schedule a regular “catch up” time with each individual manager, many one-to-one issues are also discussed.
If this describes some of the meetings you convene, how about taking action to ensure that, from now on, they are highly productive?
If you’re like Karen and have difficulty suggesting to others how they could improve their meetings, I suggest you pass this article on to them. Effective time management also includes effective meeting management.
You’ll do so much, you’ll be surprised – once you get your meetings organised.
9 Ways to Improve Your Time Management with
Super Productive Meetings
- Ask yourself, is this meeting really necessary?
- Invite as few people as possible
- Have a written agenda with clear objectives
- Double check the meeting venue has been organised the day before
- Start and finish on time
- Have an effective chairperson
- Circulate the minutes within 48 hours
- Stand up and stretch every 30 minutes
- Ensure all mobile phones and pagers are turned off
Good time management is also about using your time wisely when attending meetings. If you can enforce these guidelines, you’ll be happy to attend future meetings knowing that your time isn’t being wasted.
Lorraine Pirihi
——————-
Lorraine Pirihi is Australia’s Personal Productivity Specialist and Leading Life Coach. The Office Organiser specialises in showing small business owners and managers, how to get organised at work so they can have a life! Lorraine is also a dynamic speaker and has produced many products including “How to Survive and Thrive at Work!”