when you're a leader you don't want to become known as a person who conducts useless frustrating and pointless meetings you know these kinds of meetings where people wonder what they're doing and why they're even there you may have attended meetings like this some stage in your career now bad meetings are common but they can absolutely be avoided if you have the right planning balance structure and good follow-up to help you avoid useless meetings and to run more effective meetings as a leader i've created this video for you it's an informative video i go into a lot of detail about meetings you will definitely need a piece of paper you will definitely need to take notes so there are four main steps to leading an effective meeting and the first question you need to ask yourself is should you have the meeting the reason so many people walk out of meetings feeling they've wasted the last 20 minutes of their life is because the information given in that meeting could have been given in a simple email if you as a leader call meetings for every little thing that you want to tell them they will begin to lose trust in you so make sure that when you have a meeting you really need to have a meeting with those people face to face to give them whatever information you need to give them typically meetings are needed for one of five reasons to give important information to get input or to brainstorm to get buy-in to motivate and inspire or to solve problems so if the reason for your meeting fits into any of these five categories then you can feel assured and confident that you're calling a meeting for the right reasons once you've decided a meeting is necessary then you need to prepare for the meeting the preparation phase is critical to running an effective meeting and in this phase you need to do four things first you need to define the purpose and objectives of the meeting second you need to create an agenda third you need to select the right attendees and the fourth you need to circulate the agenda so i'll go through each of those four points right now the first one defining your objectives for the meeting this is quite often uncovered when you're deciding whether you need to have the meeting so are you having a meeting because you need to choose a new supplier do you need to solve a problem in your supply chain and you need your team to brainstorm do you need to talk to them about where you're going to have this year's christmas party what is the purpose of your meeting what is the objective overall objective at the meeting what do you need to achieve or want to achieve by the end of the meeting you need to be clear on this so you can have an effective meeting this will help you make sure that your meeting is on point and it's not a waste of time the second thing you need to do is to create the agenda so this is a report or a document that will outline the topics and the contents of the meeting it needs to be detailed it needs to be informative you need to include a start time you need to include key points that you're going to talk about you need to include some discussion time some q a time future actions and end time so this is a document that should be given to every person who is attending the meeting and it should help them understand what the meeting is going to be about the third thing you need to do is to select the right attendees so not everybody will need to be in the meeting you need to invite people who need to be there and who will have something to add to the meeting carefully think of who you want to invite and why you're inviting that person so choose people who will find the meeting valuable and also people who have something to contribute to the meeting write this down on a piece of paper when you're preparing for your meeting and invite those people on your list next you need to circulate your agenda so circulating your agenda will help people know what to expect and will give them enough time to prepare for the meeting what's important here is you need to circulate it so you give people enough time so they can prepare for the meeting if some topics are going to be more complex if people need to bring research or some information to the meeting they might need time to prepare for that so consider this when you're circulating your agenda so it's the day of the meeting everybody's in the room now you as the leader need to conduct the meeting when conducting the meeting there are six things that you need to think about and be aware of when you start the meeting you need to begin it by telling people what is the purpose of the meeting what do you hope to achieve what is the outcome you are aiming for by the end of the meeting this will help everybody to feel and to know that they're on the same page everyone will exactly know what the meeting will be about it will also help people know what is expected of them what is the contribution that you expect them to give during the meeting the second thing you need to be aware of is you need to encourage participation so everybody in the meeting will have a different participation style some people might talk a lot some people might talk a little some people might talk way too much you as a leader need to be able to manage this you need to encourage people who tend to be more quiet you need to encourage them to contribute you might need to tone down other people who tend to talk too much so you as a manager or a leader need to facilitate this and you need to manage every participation style that people have during that meeting the third thing you do during the meeting when you're conducting it is to begin talking about your key points so key point one two three etc now during this phase there'll be a mixture of you talking and other people in the meeting room talking as well and if you've done a really good job at creating a safe space for people to talk you shouldn't have any issues to generate conversation and to generate ideas but one thing you do need to be careful of though is staying on track making sure that everybody stays on track for the topics that you are talking about when you detect that people are derailing the conversation to another topic you need to be able to bring them back to the main topics that you need to talk about otherwise you risk leaving the meeting room with those topics unresolved you may also need to defuse conflict so sometimes during meetings things can get heated people can disagree and the last thing you want is for people in your team to leave that meeting room not liking one another to have some kind of rift or distrust between other people so as a leader you really need to make sure that you defuse any kind of conflict during that meeting number four open up discussion time or q a so once you've finished discussing the main topics that you need to talk about you can open up for a discussion with your team or for them to ask you questions this will allow you to talk about things that weren't previously covered in the meeting or for your team to bring new issues to you you may be able to provide solutions to those issues if they're easy you can probably do it on the spot during the meeting issue solved if they're more complicated though you might need time to go away to research to find out information for them but opening up the meeting for a discussion time and q a is a great way for you as a leader to learn about things that you might need to know about and it also helps your team feel more valued because they have a chance to share their ideas or different problems with you the fifth thing you need to do is to recap on future actions so before everybody leaves the meeting room you need to make sure everybody understands what was discussed what is expected of them from now on what action do they need to take ask everyone if they are clear on what they need to do and the sixth thing that you do is you end the meeting so you need to thank everybody for attending the meeting thank them for their time tell them you appreciate their input make sure you highlight people during the meeting who provided you with new information or really helpful information or ideas and also highlight people who spoke during the meeting when they don't usually speak so you know those people who are a little more introverted and a little more shy thank them for their contribution tell people you will follow up with them if necessary after the meeting and then wish everybody a wonderful day following up is a great time for you as a leader to understand how effective you were at running that meeting this is especially important if you're a new leader or if you're leading a new team for the very first time so following up after meetings is really important it's a great chance for people to give you feedback and for you to ask for feedback and invite feedback as well and you can do this as a leader in a number of ways you can use a simple email you can use a google poll and you can also use slack and there's probably a number of other ways you can get feedback from your team and what you want to ask them is were they given enough time to prepare for the meeting how did the meeting help them deliver value would they have liked to see other topics covered in the meeting and any other suggestions asking your team questions like this will help them feel valued and help them feel important and included in all meetings it will also help you as a leader uncover really helpful information that you need to know about so you can run more effective meetings in the future as i mentioned at the beginning of this video i went into a lot of detail about running effective meetings you may have some questions about what i covered and what i talked about so if you do please write them in the comments below thank you so much for watching this video check out the other videos on the screen before you leave and i will see you next week