I sit on a national “professional” board. We meet three times a year. These meetings are supposed to help grow the association, among other things. I just came back from a board meeting which was painful to sit through. It was completely disorganized, and communications became brutal.

If you find yourself in a position where you must conduct meetings with more than just a couple of people, please utilize the following 4 tips to help you stay focused and be productive. Your participants will appreciate it.

1. Have a complete agenda with starting and ending times. This will keep everyone on track.

2. Send the agenda in advance of the meeting and ask for any additions or corrections.

3. Control the trouble makers or the big talkers—it is your responsibility as the leader to stay on track.

4. End on time.

These may seem like simple, common sense tips. However, after spending two days listening to ramblings and fights, I cannot stress enough the importance of staying focused and communicating a positive outcome.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Professionals, Women Only. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.