Etiquette makes the difference in a meeting

By John Kariuki

When meetings are called, some employees are usually late, daydream through presentations or display lack of grasp of the agenda.

Formal meetings can range from tea break briefing to a daylong conference but some workers don’t take them seriously.

The underlying principles of meeting etiquette are good manners and courtesy.

Here are some crucial tips that can make a meeting fruitful.

Prepare for the meeting. Get your facts right and clarify all sticking points prior to the meeting. Rehearse your remarks well if you have to make a presentation. If you are using statistics, reports or any other information make sure it has been distributed to members at least a day prior to the meeting. Meeting etiquette demands that the person calling the meeting — or the chair — should be the most senior or the one with the most urgent interest in the agenda at hand.

If you are the chair, decide the time, place and agenda of the meeting. Communicate these details to everyone who is expected to attend.

Failing to relay this information in good time is bad meeting etiquette and people will feel ambushed and sidelined when the agenda is read to them for the first time in the meeting.

Listen carefully

Pay attention and listen attentively even if the topic being presented does not relate to your department or area of operation directly. Some people listen to only what concerns them in meetings and switch off or start informal chats when speakers from other departments are talking. This is both rude and wrong.

Sit straight and avoid unnecessary interruptions.

Be decorous. Appropriate dressing at meetings brings out the professionalism image in you. If there is an established seating pattern in a meeting, accept it. There could be some chairs reserved for invited speakers or experts and it is embarrassing to be asked to give up your seat when the meeting is in progress with everybody looking.

Most people know their places during in-house or departmental meetings.

When making your contribution, remain focused on the agenda and don’t drag in vexatious issues or innuendoes aimed at settling personal scores. It is a serious breach of meeting etiquette to divulge information to others who were not invited particularly on matters touching on them.

Long meeting

Don’t waste time. There are some bosses in some corporations who equate the length of time spent in a meeting with its apparent success.

They believe that the longer the meeting, the more serious the recommendations coming out of it will look and meetings drag on for hours.

Some employees believe that they have to say something at every meeting no matter how unrelated it could be to the official agenda because they have been given an opportunity to talk. And so they ramble on, pompously, repeating what everybody else has said until their allocated time is over.

And then there are any-other-business experts in some meetings who have the knack of bringing up inconsequential matters.

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