Not all meetings are created equally – in fact, there are several different types of business meetings in an organization that each serves a particular function. What are the different meetings types that occur? Yoyomeeting has compiled a handy list of each type of meeting.
Types of Business Meetings That Occur in the Workplace
Here 5 types of business meetings that commonly occur in the workplace:
- Innovation meetings
- Decision-making meetings
- Status meetings
- Team building meetings
- Information-sharing meetings
1. Innovation Meetings
This type of business meeting goes by many names. Most commonly, these are referred to as “brainstorming sessions”.
The importance of this type of business meeting is self-explanatory as innovation is what keeps your business growing.
To set up one of these meetings, you will typically gather as much of your staff as possible to gain the highest volume of opinions. It is also important to designate a note-taker that can take down any details of the meeting for later review.
When conducting an innovation meeting, it is important to not shoot down any ideas in the early portions of the meeting. Throughout the main brainstorming session, any and all ideas should be written down by the designated note-taker. Ideas should be evaluated at the end of the session to determine which opportunities or solutions are feasible. Cutting off any idea may discourage others to offer their own perspectives. You want the meeting to foster innovative ideas and create a comfortable and conversational environment.
Once you have narrowed your list down to feasible ideas, you can take it upon yourself to gather a smaller action team to discuss which ones can be implemented in a cost-effective and efficient manner.
2. Decision-Making Meetings
The title for this one is enough to understand what happens in this meeting. However, the proper execution of these meetings is usually lacking in business. Too often, not enough people are involved in the decision-making process. There is nothing worse than heading to one of these meetings and they devolve into a series of new questions and tangents. Eventually, no decision gets made and everyone is back to the drawing board.
While it is important to scrutinize decisions, you want to prepare yourself and your team for the meeting and making a final decision. If you are in charge of running the meeting, you need to make sure everyone is prepared with their required information before the meeting begins. Further, you need to organize a meeting agenda to follow to keep things from going off the rails. Finally, it’s recommended to use a decision recording software. The most important part of this type of meeting is the follow-through after the meeting to put the solution or idea into motion.
3. Status Meetings
Status meetings, or status update meetings, are used to assure your staff that their ideas and solutions are being worked on, even if they aren’t directly involved. Status meetings have the additional benefit of inspiring staff to continue pushing towards a conclusion as they can see small milestones get checked off.
Before status meetings begin, you should have a clear roadmap established of implementation. This roadmap will make it easier for you to show a clear progression and where you are heading next.
When you conduct a status meeting, gather all of the people who have been working on the project. They don’t need to prepare an entire presentation, but a few words from them can lend to their confidence and give them further motivation to finish up their parts of the project. At the conclusion of the meeting, inform the others of the next steps of the process and whether or not the final end date projection has changed.
4. Team Building Meetings
This may not seem like the most productive use of time, but team-building meetings have proven to be effective. The research is in and the experts have discovered that workforces that feel united will work harder for each other. One of the important identifiers, before you begin, is to decide on what a “team” means in your industry. Is it a sales staff? Marketing team? It is best to keep teams between 3-8 people in order to keep people from being able to get lost in the crowd.
The staff may not be thrilled about these meetings at first, but there are great ideas on how to make staff meetings fun for your team. Many will want to just get their job done and go home for the day. With this in mind, try to use these meetings when the work levels are low and people will be more receptive to taking time out of their schedules.
It can also be beneficial to have several long-term goals for the teams to compete towards. Competition has been known to breed tremendous results between groups of people in the workplace. Allow teams to choose their own leaders or representatives that they can confide in throughout the workday. The interconnectivity will undoubtedly yield tremendous success and stability in the long term.
5. Information Sharing Meetings
These meetings are used to communicate new industry findings or internal information to the rest of your staff.
In terms of the types of business meetings listed, this is the most diverse type, as it can take many forms. The most common types of information gathering meetings can include seminars, guest speakers, and panels. These meetings are used to communicate new industry findings or internal information to the rest of your staff.
All you have to do for these types of meetings is to decide what information needs to be shared, and the best method of delivery to get it to your staff.
Manage Your Meetings Easily With Yoyomeeting
While there are several common types of business meetings, the approach for your meetings shouldn’t change. Being prepared and organized for meetings will be helpful in using time efficiently and achieving the meeting’s objective.
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