3 Secrets in Holding Effective Meetings🤝

Imagine this:

It’s a gloomy Monday morning. You have five more minutes until you present your company’s monthly report and you are barely surviving on your daily boost of coffee.

You’ve spent days — and a couple of sleepless nights — compiling a load of statistics and marketing insights and you can’t wait to get this meeting over and done with.

As you kick off your 50-slide presentation with a “Good morning, everyone…”, you notice that people are starting to yawn, with quite a few getting a little restless and all fidgety.

What do you do then?

Rest assured, as the TheMeetUpSG is here to share with you 3 secrets in holding effective meetings in this week’s work edition!

1) Set a clear goal for everyone

(Source: Giphy)

Set out a clear agenda for your meeting!

Make sure that everyone who attends your meeting has a clear purpose for doing so.

You can do this by first deciding beforehand who is required to attend this meeting. After you’ve compiled a list of these individuals, let them know WHY you would need them to attend your meeting.

One of the few ways you can go about this is to assign a role or task for each individual prior to the meeting!

(Source: Giphy)

In doing so, you are telling every person that his/her presence is essential and that you are looking forward to his/her active contribution within your stipulated time frame of discussion.

This provides each individual with a certain amount of time to prepare the necessary materials beforehand, knowing that they are required to bring something to the table!

2) Create a safe environment!

(Source: Unsplash)

Do you feel like there aren’t enough people contributing to your meeting?

More often than not, the reason behind this is because people do not feel comfortable speaking up or voicing their opinions in an environment that doesn’t feel safe!

So, how then can you create a safe environment that encourages greater communication and discussion?

Have an icebreaker!

(Source: Giphy)

You can first start off by holding a pre-game session to help break the ice!

So, the next time you’re holding a meeting, why not pop a question into your first slide that gets people to comment on a topic, share with the person beside them about how their week has been, or even watch a short video clip together and ask for some feedback! However, these strategies may not be enough especially when you are holding meetings that involve big groups of people. Therefore, we highly recommend supplementing these ice-breakers with breakout groups!

3) Keep your audience active

(Source: Giphy)

Here are two ways that can help you keep your audience alert and actively listening to what you’ve got to say:

Ask rhetorical questions.
Rhetorical questions are those which do not require an answer from the audience.

(Source: Giphy)

However, they are highly effective in capturing the attention of your listeners as they probe them to think deeper about these questions!

Here are a few examples of rhetorical questions:

• “Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?” (H. L. Mencken)
• “Does anyone here want to eat more without gaining weight?”

Because the answers to these questions are usually pretty obvious, they demand almost an immediate response from the audience, drawing them once again to your topic of discussion and keeping them attentive!

Ask a question that requires action!

(Source: Unsplash)

Ask a question that gets people to stand up, raise their hand or do something! This is a sure and quick way to boost the energy level in the room.

For example, you can use the breakout rooms strategy to get people from across the room to discuss with one another!

If you’re holding a virtual meeting, fret not! You can make use of the interactive tools available on platforms such as Zoom and Skype. Get people to give a thumbs up or raise their hands if they agree with what you’re saying and even type in the chatroom if they have any questions or inputs too!

This creates an incentive for everyone to actively participate and contribute to your discussion!

(Source: Giphy)

And there you have it, the 3 secrets to holding a highly successful and effective meeting!

So, the next time you’re asked to give a presentation or summarise a 100-page report in 2 hours, remember to set a clear goal for everyone, create a safe environment and keep your audience active!

Like what you see? Follow us on Instagram @themeetupsg and get the latest updates on upcoming blog posts and offers that we have in store for you!

Last but not least, remember to have fun and rock that presentation! 👩‍🎤🎸✨

Cheers,
TheMeetUpSG🎈