Meetings provoke strong emotions for many professionals.
When used with skill, meetings are an excellent way to get work done and build relationships simultaneously. When they’re run poorly, they burn up precious time and create frustration. Given how many meetings project managers attend, there’s a great ROI to understanding the importance of project meetings and thinking ahead to plan your meetings.
Successful project managers have extraordinary meeting skills. To enhance your meeting skills, learn how to navigate these five different types of project meetings. Once you master these fundamentals, you can move on to more complex meeting types.
1. Project Kickoff Meeting
If you begin a project on the right foot, all the subsequent steps will be easier to manage. Use the following tips to organize an effective project kickoff meeting.
(e.g., “I’m Jane Smith, project manager at ACME. I joined Acme in 2015 in the application development department.)
2. Project Status Meeting
The purpose of status review meetings in project management is to keep a project moving toward success. Most project managers recommend using a relatively fixed agenda and time with this meeting. To keep the team engaged, systematically follow the agenda and keep the meeting held on a tight schedule. If you are using a project management software tool like Microsoft Project, consider sending a project status report in advance of the meeting to get everyone on the same page. Use these expert tips during your next status meeting:
3. Stakeholder Meetings
Winning and sustaining the support of your stakeholders is an essential contributor to your project’s success. If you have many stakeholders to manage, focus this meeting on your project’s most influential stakeholders.
4. Change Control Meetings
Despite the best planning in the world, you will encounter surprises on your projects. A risk event may occur like a system failure, vendor delay, or something else. These changes need to be managed in a disciplined, systematic way. While you may have the power to approve small change requests as the project manager, most change requests will need to be reviewed through a governance process and meetings.
5. End Project Meetings
The end of the project (or the project phase) is an excellent opportunity to review how the work unfolded. For the best results, schedule this meeting with the project team members within a few days of the project’s completion.
4 Bonus Tips to Make the Most of Virtual Meetings
You might have most or all of these meetings in a virtual, remote format due to the global pandemic and large-scale shift to remote work. Use the following four tips to make the most of your calls regardless of the platform you use.
1. Get familiar with mute button etiquette. Learn how to use the mute button consistently in every meeting. It is one of the best ways to reduce the impact of background noise.
2. Use screen sharing thoughtfully. Screen sharing for collaboration and problem solving is a fantastic tool. Before you use it, consider tidying up your virtual space to keep meeting participants focused on the task at hand.
3. Check your lighting. Poor lighting on a video call makes it tough to see you. When possible, use natural light. Alternatively, consider buying a light. NY Mag has a series of suggestions to help you choose: The Best (Most Flattering) Lighting for Video Calls, According to Experts.
4. Avoid defaulting to video. Video conference calls are not always the right choice. There is Harvard Business Review research that explains one reason why video calls are tiring: “having to engage in a “constant gaze” makes us uncomfortable — and tired..” Therefore, mix in audio-only calls and phone calls from time to time.
Now it’s time to take action. What is one way you could improve a meeting you run this week using this article?
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