This article provides ten top tips for chairing a meeting. Some may seem obvious but all relate to mistakes I have seen chairpersons make, or made myself!
• Make sure you have clear aims and objectives for the meeting – many meetings are held in businesses for no better reason than that that’s what they’ve always done each month. That’s just not effective.
• Make sure the meeting has an agenda and that this has been issued to all participants in advance
• Make sure you have allocated a dedicated minute taker to the meeting and that that person understands their role
• If you have a large number of participants make simple rules and list them before you start e.g. everyone must put up their hand and be indicated by the chair before speaking (to stop people all speaking at once.)
• If this is a follow-up or on-going meeting make sure that the first point on the agenda is going through the action points listed on the previous minutes.
• If actions have not been carried out this may or may not be the time to find out why. If there is a later point on the agenda that will explain why an action has not been carried out, state firmly that this point will be discussed on agenda point 5 (or whatever the relevant number is).
• Keep people on topic. It’s easy for discussions to become impassioned and roam off to other topics. Firmly state that these issues will either be discussed later in the meeting or are not relevant to the meeting.
• Don’t lose your temper! It is vital that the chair keeps a cool head in order to maintain order in the meeting.
• At the end of the meeting ask the minute taker if s/he has any points that need clarifying. This gives the minute taker an opportunity to check details on the spot, and minutes can then be issued more quickly.
• Check the meeting minutes before issuing them, or having them issued, to the other participants and any team members who were absent.
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