8 Meetings Tips to Make Your Meetings More Productive (8 GEMS)

Are all the meetings you hold at work productive or do they sometimes fall short of your expectations? Well, here are 8 GEMS to help you make your meetings more productive (Actually, GGGEMSSS).

1.  Get with the Agenda. Have your agenda out well ahead of the next meeting you run. Far too often the full agenda is only available at the meeting itself and people come unprepared. Getting a weekly meeting agenda out to all a day in advance or a monthly meeting up to a week in advance allows people to have the relevant facts and data at hand.

2.  Groom your successor at every meeting. You will never be promoted until you have someone to take your place. Meetings afford you an opportunity to let your second in command get the practice necessary to fill your shoes. Then guide and nurture them depending upon their performance.

3.  Get control. If you are at a meeting that your boss is running, offer to take the minutes and then sit at the right hand of your boss. It is a position of power and if the boss or someone else rambles, you can say, “Sorry, for the minutes, are we still on agenda point 3 or have we digressed?” You can get the meeting back on track without the boss losing face.

4.  Easy to get input if you ask the right questions. Never ask, “What are your inputs on this?” People cannot think of something they cannot picture clearly in their minds. Ask questions they can picture like, “What 3 ways can we reduce the cost of this procedure?” What 3 ways can we increase the efficiency of …” You will get some real golden nuggets when you ask the right questions.. (tons more of these tips in our book, Mining For Goldú…Facilitation Skills to Unearth a Wealth of Ideas From Your Team)

5.  Meeting Milestones. Set not only an exact start and end time to the meeting and stick to it, but make sure you have milestones along the timeline. Assign a timer and tell her / him, we need 15 minute warnings so we keep on track for an hour long meeting and 30 minute warnings for a half day or longer meeting.

6.  Shoot out bullets. No longer have long minutes from meetings. Take them in short bullet form, that is, a bullet and then the basic concept. No need for a capital letter and a full stop, just concepts. Easier to record, read and will actually be USED.

7.  Stretch their imaginations. Have a 30 second group stretch every 30 minutes. Takes so little time but adds so much more energy to your meeting, getting you great results and solid gold productivity.

8.  Stand for Success. You have 45% more energy standing than sitting. Consider shorter meetings focusing on one topic and have everyone stand while they discuss the topic. The changed dynamic will also afford you greater creativity from your team.

These 8 tips are only one of hundreds we offer in our programmes, books and audio books.  How to get people to Open – Up and share their ideas in a meeting?   If you’d like to know more about how to facilitate meetings, check out my “Mining For Gold! Facilitation Skills to Unearth a Wealth of Ideas From Your Team” Package.

The “Mining For Gold! will show you how to:

• get people to open up in meetings
• gain control of meetings before you lose it
• set the ground rules
• keep people with more power from asserting it
• get ideas to flow smoothly and quickly
• keep meetings light and fun
• handle difficult participants
• and more…

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“Fun to read and easy to understand and apply, Michael Podolinsky’s Mining For Gold fiilled with useful information. If you want to reach your people – I mean really learnt what they are thinking – this is the book for you…”

- - Dato Lawrence Chan Kum Peng CSP
Founder & Executive Chairman, Personal Development Leadership Management Corporation (M) Sdn Bhd

3 Speaking, Training and Meetings Tips! Speaking, training and meetings need not be hard nor should they ever be dry or boring to the participants. Here are 3 quick tips to make each one easier for you to deliver and a LOT easier on your participants.

1) Speak to individuals, never to the group. Even if I have an audience of 2000+, I only speak to one person at a time. Mother Theresa once said, “One never cares for a crowd, only for an individual. If I visualized a crowd, I’d never get started. The important thing is, the individual.” People get nervous speaking to crowds but rarely to their closest friend…an individual. By the way, it is far easier to look at a face in the crowd smiling at you rather than a hostile face. The smile feeds you energy and confidence while the frown or scowl takes it away.

2) Training is more about influencing behaviour than conveying words. Remember that. Why give them 10,000 words if they change nothing? Instead share what you would like them to DO, get their buy in by having them say it makes sense. Then have them practice it, rewarding them (praise, monetary, feed them, etc.) for successful completion. Now you have ‘trained’ your people.

3) Meetings are for a ‘meeting of minds’, not for attendance. You attend a funeral. You should not simply ‘attend meetings.’ If you are not going to speak, share, challenge or participate, you should not be there. If the meeting is simply to give information, skip the meeting and post the information on a Web site. Everyone at EVERY meeting should be sharing. Design your meetings to be true meetings, not passive ‘information dumps’.

Amazingly simple yet so profound…speaking, training and meetings need to be geared to involved individuals who take action.

If you’d like to know simple techniques for getting people to Open – Up and share their ideas in a meeting or a training session? Check out my “Mining For Gold! Facilitation Skills to Unearth a Wealth of Ideas From Your Team” Package.

I wrote this “Mining For Gold!” to help managers on facilitating meetings; trainers on running coaching sessions and how to extract great ideas from your participants.

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“Wow! “Mining For Gold! is a must read if you are in business it makes child’s play of turning a meeting with your people into a meeting of minds… and, when minds meet, action is the result.”

- Winston Marsh
Australian Marketing Guru

Public speaking is something everyone has to do from time to time. For some, it is a joy and an opportunity to shine. For others, a torment and a drudgery. Here are 3 quick tips to help you overcome the FEAR of public speaking.

First, remember FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real. We think they, the audience, is not on our side. RUBBISH! I have never gone before ANY audience that was hoping I would be bad. Every audience wants you to be GOOD and wants you to be effective and interesting. In other words, they are on your side!

Second, NEVER EVER speak to a CROWD. Crowds are tough audiences. Speak to INDIVIDUALS. It is easy for most of us to speak to one person at a time.  That is, speak to just one person in the audience at a time. Speak to a friendly face for 30 seconds. Then look towards another friendly face and speak to him or her for 30 seconds. By speaking to just ONE person at a time, you minimise your fear and maximise the impact upon your audience.

Third, look at those who smile more. Happy, pleasant people feed you energy and relax you. Never look at those who appear to be sucking on a lime. They are the black-holes of your energy and enthusiasm.

If you focus on these 3 suggestions,  you are instantly a more confident and capable speaker. In future blogs we’ll cover dozens more ideas for speaking and presenting as well as ideas for career development, sales, time and stress management, leadership and team building.