How to Make Project Meetings More Effective and Worth Participating?
Project meetings have never been a favorite among teams. People who believe that nothing productive comes up with it and they tend to have a close mind and claim that project meetings are boring, monotonous, and dreadful. When you have this kind of people during meeting sessions, don’t expect to acquire input from them.
Even you use your leadership prowess and project management influences, project meetings are still hard to facilitate, not only to the fact that you need to plan an agenda, but there is a concern with participants who’d rather sit in a corner and say nothing.
Ask every person what comes into their minds when you mention project meetings and you get almost the same response: It’s an event where you talk about a certain topic or issues regarding the project or organization. Then that’s it. No information expansion is brought and they prefer not to elaborate their responses.
Some people on the other side of the spectrum don’t have any idea the effectiveness and purpose of a project meeting. Hence, they can’t simply respond in a way that others mentioned above.
Project meetings are effective, informative, and builds an environment for collaboration as well as bringing ideas into life. However, there is still a participating from the team members to take into account. So here are some tips to give your project meetings a wake-up call and lure your members to participate in it.
- Make sure you have the right people. Run a list of people who will participate in your project meeting. Don’t just indicate their names; what do they do? What capabilities do they possess that you believe will contribute to the meeting? Having the wrong people in the meeting won’t take you anywhere and you missed an opportunity for the right people’s attention.
- Prepare an agenda every project meeting. Within this agenda are a set of discussions to bring to the table so you have to set a time interval on it. Say you start the meeting at 9:15 and your first concern is about the project initiation updates. So your target time to gather all these reports is 9:30. Organizing each topic on the agenda will help you gather each of your member’s input.
- Set a project meeting objective and summarize. A project meeting with no clear and specific objective is like a runaway train with no destination… or an operator for that matter. Ask yourself, what is the purpose of this meeting? What do we achieve at the end of the day? Highlight the concerns you want to bring to the meeting and elicit participation from your members by throwing inquiries their way.
Before moving on to the next objective or discussion, summarize the key points and confirm if there are more questions or concerns from the members.
- Stand up. Yes, facilitate a project meeting with no chairs. Sounds absurd, but standing up can speed up the meeting and even triggers attention from the participants.
- Set Ground Rules. And make sure you and everyone stick to them. When you set the project meeting to start at 11 AM, everyone should be in the conference room at that time. Time is precious, and you need to savor every second of it.
- Train yourself and your team. How to set up a project meeting, listening, preparing an agenda, and how to contribute as a participant?
Run an overview or summary of your project meeting every time you finish. You have to ensure that all participants are aware of what transpired in the meeting and have agreed to the following conclusions you have settled to progress on the project.
Project meetings should have a progress at the end of the day. Above all else, you still need to incorporate your leadership skills to bring the meeting to its efficacy.
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