Any individual or business owner might have their reasons to plan a business meeting. These reasons can range from communicating as an enterprise to building business collaborations, and making business related decisions. Considering the significance of meetings today, when you fail to schedule a meeting the right way, it could result in wasting time that would have been used for other important things.
Furthermore, failing to schedule your meeting well can lower the productivity of your business and lead to disappointment for those attending your event. One survey conducted by the University of North Carolina determined that a third of the meetings attended by employees didn’t yield the desired result. Here, we will talk about some of the best ways to effectively schedule business meetings to help you get the result you desire.
Five Ways To Schedule Your Business Meetings Effectively
Here are five effective ways to schedule a meeting:
Prepare the agenda for the meeting
Before scheduling a business meeting, you must define the goal of the meeting. Remember that every meeting must have an agenda which will determine what will be discussed during the event, who should attend the event, and what will be the outcome of the meeting. Find answers to questions like what will be the frequency of your business meeting? What factors determine the right people to attend the meeting? How long will these meetings last?
Choose a favorable date and time
Instead of picking a random day and time when scheduling a meeting, consider the circumstances of those attending the meeting. You should consider issues like the availability of your attendees, the time zone of those attending, and their personal schedules. In most cases, scheduling a business meeting during working hours (especially between 10am to 12pm and 2pm to 4pm) could backfire because your attendees might be handling productive tasks or attending other meetings. A more favorable and less busy time range to schedule a meeting is from 9am – 10am or 3pm – 4pm.
Use a meeting scheduling tool like Lemcal
To stay in the same range with this heavily evolving world (where activities and tasks can be delegated to software or online tools for efficiency), you should use scheduling tools for your meetings. One of the tools that you can use to effectively schedule your business meeting is lemcal. A tool like lemcal will give you a broad range of options that will help determine the availability of those attending your meeting, schedule your meetings automatically, and send out reminders to people attending your event. Learn more about a reliable tool here.
Plan your meeting to be concise and brief
It is essential to make your meeting brief so that it doesn’t impact the productivity or schedules of those attending. Respect those attending your meeting by starting the meeting on time and ending it at the scheduled time. Resist the urge to extend the time of your meetings beyond the predetermined schedule. For a more favorable result, limit the time of your meetings to a minimum of 30 minutes to a maximum of one hour. This is the ideal way to ensure that those attending your meeting pay attention during the event.
Only important stakeholders should attend your meeting
Finally, it would help if you only invited important stakeholders to your event. This means only individuals who need to be at the meeting should get invited if you want to achieve success. Therefore, do not invite unnecessary attendees who will not bring anything meaningful to the agenda. Keep those attending your meeting comfortable and allow them to share their ideas. Everyone present should listen actively, make contributions, and ask questions. Key points should be summarized to keep everyone in attendance in the same bracket.
Conclusion
Effectively scheduling a meeting requires commitment if you want the best results. The practices showcased here will help you derive your desired results and boost collaboration.