1. Designate A Meeting Facilitator:
Designating a meeting facilitator helps the meeting run more smoothly for several reasons. They keep the conversation on track with what’s on the agenda, which prevents participants from going off on tangents that turn the meeting into a waste of time.
2. Make Collaboration (Not Reporting) The Focal Point:
A sign of a good meeting is the amount of team collaboration that happens during it. Share accomplishments, goals reached, and upcoming initiatives. When you bog meetings down with tedious reports that can be shared via email, it’s a turn-off for your participants. Their minds will drift to tonight’s happy hour, or the upcoming weekend — anywhere but your report.
3. Engage All Your Meeting Participant:
As a team leader, it’s important for you to encourage everyone involved in a meeting to speak up with their thoughts, give status updates (when necessary), and share ideas and feedback. If they don’t feel like the forum is open to them, they can feel frustrated and disengaged — it can even lower their morale. If there are people who don’t speak up during the meeting, follow up with them toward the end of the meeting and ask for their input directly.
4. Ask Questions That Encourage Open Discussion:
We’ve all sat in meetings where nobody talks or shares anything except for the meeting leader. Those are mind-numbingly dull. That’s why it’s crucial for the team leader to think of ways to add interest and engagement to the process by encouraging open discussions.
5. Lead By Example:
Managers lead by example in many facets of their positions, and creating a successful meeting is one of them. Be on time, well-prepared, and focused. Use open communication and encourage others to do so as well. Stay on track and follow the agenda template and timeline. Respect the meeting facilitator. Over time, team members will model themselves after you during the meetings, which will increase participation and engagement among the whole team.