How to utilise your time in a meeting

Meeting rooms

With the workweek becoming more and more busy, it's important to make sure you are getting the most out of your meetings. This guide will explain how you can best utilise your time when partaking in business meetings, both in person and if you should have to join online via a Zoom meeting or similar.

Plan ahead

Whether you are leading or simply attending a meeting, you will likely want to make every word that you say count. If you are presenting anything, make sure you arrive fully prepared with any presentation materials you might need, such as handouts and presentations you may have created electronically.

If creating an electronic presentation, it is wise to have a backup copy in case your planned method of accessing it doesn’t work for some reason. Emailing your presentation to yourself is a popular way of ensuring you can access it from anywhere with an internet connection. Storing it to your personal laptop’s hard drive can also be a failsafe option.

Regardless of how confident you are about speaking in front of others, scripting what you’d like to say beforehand can really help you make the most of your limited meeting time. Script it, practise it and then condense your full notes into short bullet points to prompt you as to what to say next. This way, you will come across as knowledgeable and not miss any key details, yet still sound natural and unrehearsed.

Keep it concise

If a topic doesn’t appear on the agenda, hold off from raising it until there’s an opportunity to raise any other business (AOB). However, properly consider whether or not you really need to raise it. Is there a chance you could wait and ask your question to the relevant person at a different time so you don’t waste the time of other attendees on a conversation that isn’t relevant to them?

As a rule of thumb, if what you have to say isn’t relevant to a significant majority of people present, now is probably not the time to discuss it. This way, the meeting will be more productive as only the topics at hand will be discussed, and the allotted time can be given wholly to this purpose.

Make the most of your minutes

There’s no point in getting someone to take minutes for your meeting if you’re not going to send those records around to all involved and in a timely manner. Sending out meeting minutes as soon as possible following the meeting is a good idea so that attendees can suggest additions to them whilst the meeting is still fresh in their minds, should they wish to amend anything. This also gives attendees as much time as possible to work on implementing any action plans or tasks it may have been decided they should complete.

Set up the room appropriately

This comes with being prepared, but alongside having everything ready regarding the content of your meeting, it is just as important to make sure you have taken care of the logistics of your meeting.

Firstly, you may want to select a meeting space to hire in a location that is central to where the majority of attendees are based. If some might be unable to attend in person, you may wish for them to attend via videolink. If this is the case, remember to contact your venue and ensure they have suitable audio/visual equipment so that this can go ahead. If they do not, you might want to select a different venue or make alternative arrangements such as providing your own equipment.

Working with your meeting room providers, let them know in advance exactly how you would like the furniture to be arranged. Depending on your meeting style and the number of attendees, there are several layouts you might like to consider to best get your message across.

Cater to all your attendees’ needs

If some of your attendees are wheelchair users, or might temporarily be on crutches for medical reasons, consider how accessible your selected meeting room is. Even rooms that claim to be on the ground floor can be difficult for some people to access if the building is raised up a few steps from the pavement and there is no ramp. Contact your meeting room provider to check these finer details well in advance so as to avoid delays.

If you’re planning a meeting with catering, you might also wish to consider people’s individual dietary requirements. Contacting all attendees in advance to request these so that you can forward them to the relevant provider will also help make sure your meeting is not delayed or interrupted by members having to leave the premises for lunch and not being on-site to resume your meeting promptly.

Once you have decided who you need to meet with, why you want to meet and in what time frame, the first step is to arrange a time, date and place to meet and be sure to confirm these details with your meeting room providers as well as your attendees.