Remember that timings are everything. Do not plan meeting on Monday morning, especially when people try getting head in game, answer their e-mails, and have their week scheduled. Avert meetings after lunch, as this is the time when people slip in to nap mode. Forget regarding having held the meeting on ‘Friday Afternoon’, as it is the time when everyone wishes to have gotten out for weekend. Invite right people. In fact, give invitations to the people who would get benefited the most from your meeting. You should also search for people who would be willing of having made real contributions. Remember that you need good decision makers over here. People having casual approach have no place in such initiatives.
The next step would that be of having sent a summary related to meeting to the other parties that show sheer interest in this regard. Research has indicated that 5-9% participants are optimal numbers with regards to decision-making and productive discussion. All you need to do is to break bigger groups in to small ones after initial introduction. You are required of having set a specified goal. It is a known fact that meetings stay on the right track when all participants are aware of the purpose behind the organization of meeting, along with specified goal for being accomplished. Try to get a fair idea about the getting together of individuals.
Send an agenda to the participants before convening of meeting, so as to make them mentally prepared. Do not get derailed from track. Do not forget that people tend to have lost interest when meeting goes off-track. Strictly stick to the agenda as well as meeting timeline. Having changed presentation tactics or media at regular intervals would aid the participants in refocusing on agenda. have a list of ‘off-task’ questions or ideas in the ‘parking lot’. This would help you in having continued with agenda, that too, without having lost useful ideas which can get addressed later on.
When individuals go on to communicate, 10% is gained from words, 1/5 th is gained from style of delivering, and the rest, i.e. 70% is gained from body language and non-verbal cues. The presentation and presenter are more significant in comparison with actual words, as far as getting the message across is concerned. Moreover, in our multi-tasking, harried world, attention-span is not what it had been before. Factors of these types are specifically important, given growing numbers of businesses making use of videoconferencing and teleconferencing to mitigate rising costs of travel and having narrowed time constraints of employee. Planners of meeting can go further with having taken tip from TV, which makes use of the formula: ‘tighten, dazzle, flow’ for riveting attention of audience.
Tighten
Have focus of meeting tightened by having set just 1 or 2 goals. Have your delivery tightened with preparation as well as practice. Let control of meeting environment be tightened by having optimized ventilation, room temperature, and lighting. As per the latest poll, poor skills relating to public speaking such as repetition, monotone voice, buzzword overuse, and over-gesturing, direction flaw, and discomfort on the physical level had been most cited in the form of reasons behind loss of focus at the time of meetings.
Dazzle
Be 100% enthusiastic and have your belief or passion shared in goal or task. Remember that enthusiasm engages attention of the participants as it is contagious by nature. Have certain tactics followed for having kept meeting interesting and fresh. Have the people waken up by doing something which was never expected before: Arrange the meeting in restaurant in place of conference room, or have a game played, or switch the visual media, or have audience participation solicited.
Flow
Have continuity maintained by having stuck to the agenda as well as time frame.