Tips for a Successful Group Meeting in Business Communication

In the life of a business group meetings are essential part. It is important to use your management skills and abilities effectively to run such meetings successfully. Recent technological advancements have also changed the manners of conducting group business meetings. Today various video conferencing tools like ezTalks Meetings etc. are used for face-to-face meetings instead of calling the participants in person to the meeting rooms. Some tips are provided here under that can make your group meeting in business communication environment more effective.

Purpose of the meeting: You can make your group business meeting more effective if you have a good purpose for calling it. You should tell about the objective and goal of calling the meeting while starting the meeting. Most important part of conducting a business meeting effectively is its first 5-10 minutes in which the leader of the meeting can set the base, define limitations, arrange the references and tell the purpose of calling that meeting etc. You can make your group meeting more effective by starting and ending it on time and speak specifically on the main purpose during your communication with other participants. The meeting should be started on time instead of waiting for the latecomers as it can be a punishment for those who have come on time. Moreover, instead of repeating the whole proceedings for latecomers you should continue your communication as it is. It will give a message to the latecomers to be more punctual in future.

Encourage open discussions: Your business group meeting can be more effective by encouraging other participants for open discussions. It will allow the shy people to speak out along with providing to you feedback from the eager participants who want to contribute more eagerly in these meetings. Usually leaders of the business meetings usually dominate other participants to improve their management skills. Such domination can discourage others to speak out their opinion regarding any issue. In order to check your instincts to dominate a business meeting it is better to delegate leadership for that meeting to someone else, if possible. It will allow other participants of the meeting in improving their own management skills by organizing the thoughts of the group while performing as a leader. It will also allow them to learn the ways of planning a meeting and preparing its agenda to make the business meeting more effective. Open discussions in a meeting can help all of its participants to focus on the main issues of the meeting consistently.

Close the first topic before proceeding further: After discussing one topic thoroughly you should close the topic completely after taking a final decision so that you can take the entire group business meeting to the next topic on your meeting agenda. Your meeting can never be effective if you waste time by proceeding to the next topic without closing discussions on first topic or beating about the bushes.

Review the main points: You can effectively manage a business group meeting if you know how to review the main points of discussion while closing each topic of discussion or at the end of entire meeting. You should end a meeting after reviewing the schedules of your time and action along with implementation of assignments and plans. It will also allow other participants of the meeting to be part of the decisions taken in that meeting. Some very interesting things can happen when people agree at one point. Such agreements can pressurize others to follow them. If most of the participants of a meeting decide to do certain task at specific point of time then it can initiate an internal incentive to inspect, monitor and control the things effectively along with saving you from these responsibilities. The group working on the same track can be used as witness if any of the participants complaint about what has to be done or what they were supposed to do. So you can manage a group meeting effectively by using public commitment of the other participants as a powerful tool.

Keep record of the meeting: The most important part of a group business meeting is to distribute its minutes within next 24 hours. It will keep the record of the important decisions taken in a meeting and the action taken on them. This record of the meeting can be used as evidence if any question arises in this regard. It will help you not only in improving your management skills but also making the conduct of a meeting more effective. You can keep such records in writing or by using some video conferencing solutions like ezTalks Meetings etc. even if you have conducted a face-to-face meeting or organized an online meeting through this tool.

Thus, the tips discussed in this write-up can help you to make your business group meeting more effective than earlier.