I have been attending many meetings the past year. These are my unofficial guidelines to remember, hopefully they will help you host an effective and productive meeting.
First, create a compelling presentation. While I am not an expert on creating great presentations here are things I would recommend: Be direct with what you want to say, three word phrases or less. Your audience can scan the slide and then focus on you and what you are saying. The same goes for graphics - make them simple to understand by pretending that you are creating it for the audience reading Time or Newsweek.
Before you start into the presentation let the audience know that you are going to talk through the slides first and that you will open up/ lead discussion after you are finished talking. This will allow you to present the information you do have in bulk and then, during the discussion you can focus on the feedback your audience is giving back to you.
During your presentation focus on a simple, clear message and use as few words as possible to convey meaningful information.
Plan. Depending on the audience, plan your presentation accordingly. If the meeting is an hour long try to condense the presentation of information into less than 30 minutes so that you have time to gather feedback and summarize the direction that discussion took.
My perfect meeting agenda:
- Intro - “Hi, I’m Matt. Today I am going to present 20 slides on x,y z corporation and why we should buy them. Once I have completed my slides i’ll open up the floor for discussion and feedback.
- Presentation - a well rehearsed, concise presentation communicates effectively.
- Discussion/Feedback - Record (or ask a friend to record) the best ideas and feedback that you hear in the discussion. Probe different points of view and don’t worry so much about reaching a consensus, rather focus on getting the group to make a decision.
- Wrap-up - spend a few minutes tying everything up. We looked at reasons to buy x,y,z company today. There are concerns about the suppliers their manufacturing unit has sourced to and we need to look into that area further.
- Follow-up communication: After you have summarized both your presentation (further condensing the information) and the feedback/discussion that you recorded condense it even further and make that available to the attendees.
This is a rough idea of what I see is wrong at many of the meetings I attend because more often than not nothing gets decided (except to have a future meeting) and multiple tangents to the meeting get followed distracting the participants from the true purpose of the meeting.
