Now you have ensured that everyone is clear on the objective and meeting agenda by asking for feedback, it is time to focus on a vital ingredient for your meeting success.
8. Timing
A major frustration that people have with meetings is that they run over time. As a facilitator, one of your major responsibilities is to manage time so that this does not happen.
The best way to do this is to outline time restrictions clearly in the opening. It much easier to take a firm grip of time from the beginning of a discussion than to try suddenly to start controlling time with 10 minutes remaining.
Do not be afraid to use strong language to do this and mention the end time as well as the time available:
We only have one hour this meeting so we must finish by 3:30 pm.
We just have 45 minutes scheduled for this discussion so we have to finish by 10 am.
To make this statement even more emphatic if there’s a clock in the room, point at it.
