Five Ways To Hold an Engaging Meeting

Meetings are an inescapable part of corporate life. Managing effective meetings, though, requires many things: a clear agenda, timelines, ideation from all participants and fun and trivia, underscored with the core goal. Rica Bhattacharyya explores the art of achieving this.

1 Have an Agenda 
The first rule is to have a clear agenda. “It is beneficial to distribute the agenda to all the participants beforehand. This helps everyone come prepared,” says Nitin Pande, vice president, HR, HCL Technologies. 

2 Strike a Balance 
An engaging meeting is a fine balance of anecdotes, instinct and information — too little or too much of any of these is a compromise, says Sameer Wadhawan, vice president, human resources, Coca-Cola India & South West Asia. Also, the leader must find ways to stimulate interaction among the group. 


3 Include Breaks 
Intersperse lengthy meetings with breaks. Take up a physical activity or a short breathing exercise or even a quiz on your company or brands. “An engaging meeting is one where the chair cuts the conversation at the right time. Debate is healthy, arguments are difficult,” says Wadhawan. 


4 Pass the Fruit Platter Around 
Here’s an aside: “Fruits should take precedence over cookies and biscuits in all meetings,” says Wadhawan. Coke boardroom meetings get done over a fruit platter, he says. “Fruits bring in more individuality, and are a very healthy option. But more importantly, we waste far lesser time moving fruits around the table, than we do moving snacks and cookies around,” he says. 


5 Be Neutral
 “While addressing the participants, the leader should be neutral and focus on the process of running the meeting, not shaping the content,” says Pande. The leader should give all the perspectives and welcome opinions; he or she should avoid sharing strong personal opinions, he adds.

(The Economic Times, Mumbai, 24-01-2014)

Five Ways To Manage Time Effectively

Effective time management can not only help one be more productive at work, but can also help one strike the right balance between personal commitments and family time. Discipline and cultivating the ability to prioritise work is key, finds Anumeha Chaturvedi. 

1 Prioritise Work A day usually comes with unexpected curveballs that may not be that significant but eat up a majority of your time, says Rishi Bhatnagar, director — staffing at Sapient Global Markets. It is important to prioritise tasks in spite of those additional activities and to avoid getting distracted by unnecessary email conversations. “Focus on your to-dos,” he says. 


2 Alter Off-Work Habits Subtle lifestyle changes like hitting bed early, a change in diet plans, exercising or meditation can help one focus better and can make one better at managing time for work as well as family, feels Anant Krishnan, a marketing manager. 


3 Plan Milestones, not Tasks Professionals should not think of work as a bunch of daily tasks or activities but as an initiative with a logical start and finish line with certain milestones, says Bhatnagar. “This way you will not have tick marked a list of tasks at the end of the day without working towards that milestone,” he says. 


4 Make Time for Important Tasks Elizabeth Grace Saunders, author of ‘The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success With Less Stress’, suggests allocating specific hours to certain tasks. One can then accordingly take out time from the less important activities if the important tasks take longer than expected. 


5 Review and Reorder Reviewing and taking stock of the week gone by can help one correct one’s schedules or possible lapses. “Make time to review your day, week or month to assess whether or not something needs to change in order to be more effective,” says Bhatnagar.

(The Economic Times, Mumbai, 31-12-2013)