How to ensure successful company meetings

Photo: ©iStock.com/ismagilov

Meetings, meetings and more meetings are what we all face in business today. Your company likely has regular weekly or monthly service and/or sales meetings. Some have daily huddles to get everyone on the same page.

You have meetings to connect, learn and communicate what your company’s goals are and to make corrections along the way. To ensure your company has successful meetings, follow the tips below. They will help lessen the frustrations of everyone on your team, and improve the culture of your organization.
 

Why we dread meetings — and how to change that

1. They don’t start or end on time. One of the things I’ve learned from Gino Wickman’s book Traction is that you should set a time to start and a time to end, as well as a specific length for your meetings. Employees become upset when a meeting keeps going on and on, because it allows attendees to ramble on and repeat the same talking points and thoughts.
2. We have to repeat information for late arrivals. Stress the importance of being punctual. Respect for everyone’s time is critical. Otherwise, future meetings might be avoided.
3. We don’t follow an agenda. Don’t just have a meeting because it was on the schedule. Have a clear purpose and objective, and focus on specific action items to be addressed and takeaway points.
4. We don’t put things in writing. Using a whiteboard or PowerPoint presentation to illustrate ideas during the meeting is great. Send those thoughts home with attendees on paper, and leave room for them to insert notes.
5. We are deathly boring. Try to be inspiring and motivational. Don’t let an unprepared, monotone, blah-blah-blah presenter ruin the entire meeting by showcasing old ideas that didn’t work anyway. Time is money, so spend it wisely.

Harness the power of your people

Line up the most engaged players on your team and encourage them to step in with their enthusiasm to keep morale high. Their positive ideas and spirit can be a great way to counteract the damaging, pessimistic words of some folks who may be in the room. The disgruntled and negative people don’t bring anything positive to the table anyway, and they sometimes will disrupt great dialogue within the team.

You may not want to invite negative employees to future meetings anyway. I’ll even go a step further and say you may want to “invite” them to leave your company as well. Sometimes, getting rid of the cancers in the company is the right thing to do. Remember, a new broom sweeps clean.

You can reach Ray Johnson, a past president of the National Pest Management Association (NPMA), president of Sevierville, Tenn.-based Johnson Pest Control, and founder of ACES for Business at ray@johnsonpestcontrol.com.