How Not To Run A Meeting

At the next meeting you lead, don't:

• Hold it if the meeting will seem unnecessary to your participants.
• Allow attendees to use their PDAs/laptops for personal reasons.
• Let participants interrupt each other.
• Go beyond your scheduled time.

Those don'ts are the biggest meeting pet peeves according to an Accountemps survey of 1,000 senior managers, as recently reported in USA Today.

Instead, ensure you are doing these techniques to ensure you hold effective meetings:

1. Limit attendance. Include only decision makers and key implementors.
2. Use an agenda. Give each topic a time limit. Ask your staff to help set the agenda so they'll know the meeting will be relevant.
3. Make sure attendees know at the meeting's beginning the benefit of why they are in the meeting.
4. Create a not-on-the agenda list of topics that will be tabled for after the meeting or for another meeting.
5. Set immediate deadlines for carrying out all decisions that are made during the meeting.
6. Start your meetings on time, and don't cut into employee's personal time at lunch or after work.