Meetings in business are familiar for those in leadership positions like project managers or senior roles within a company. These gatherings are essential for enhancing communication, encouraging collaboration, and advancing success within the organization.
However, not everyone may be aware of these meetings’ definitions, types, and purposes. This article serves as a comprehensive guide and provides tips for conducting productive meetings in business.
What Is Business Meeting?
A business meeting is a meeting of individuals who come together to discuss and make decisions on specific topics related to business. The purposes of this meeting may include updating team members on current projects, planning future efforts, solving problems, or making decisions that impact the entire company.
Meetings in business can be conducted in person, virtual, or a combination of both and can be formal or informal.
The goal of a business meeting is to exchange information, align team members, and make decisions that help the business achieve its goals.
Types Of Meetings In Business
There are several types of meetings in business, but the 10 common types include:
1/ Monthly Team Meetings
Monthly team meetings are regular meetings of a company’s team members to discuss ongoing projects, assign tasks, and keep people informed and aligned. These meetings typically take place monthly, on the same day, and last from 30 minutes to several hours (depending on the size of the group and the amount of information covered).
Monthly team meetings provide an opportunity and guidance for team members to exchange information and ideas, discuss project progress, and make sure everyone is working toward the same target.
These meetings can also be used to address any challenges or problems the team faces, identify solutions, and make decisions that affect the direction of the project or the team’s work.
An all-hands meeting is simply a meeting involving all staff of a company, in other words, a monthly team meeting. It’s a regular meeting – happening maybe once a month – and is usually run by the heads of the company.
2/ Stand Up Meetings
The stand-up meeting, also known as daily stand-up or daily scrum meeting, is a type of short meeting, usually lasting no more than 15 minutes, and held daily to give the team quick updates on the progress of the project, or completed workload, plan to work on today.
At the same time, it helps to identify and solve the obstacles that the team members are facing and how they affect the team’s common goals.
3/ Status Update Meetings
Status update meetings focus on providing updates from team members on the progress of their projects and tasks. They may happen more frequently than monthly meetings, such as weekly.
The purpose of status update meetings, of course, is to provide a transparent view of the progress of each project and to identify any challenges that may affect project success. These meetings will not get caught up in issues like discussion or problem-solving.
For a larger scale meeting, the Status Update Meeting can also be named a ‘Town Hall Meeting‘, A town hall meeting is simply a planned company-wide meeting in which the focus is on management answering questions from employees. Therefore, this meeting involved a Q&A session, making it more open, and less formulaic than any other type of meeting!
4/ Problem-Solving Meetings
These are meetings that revolve around identifying and resolving the challenges, crises, or problems an organization is facing. They are often unexpected and need to bring individuals from different departments or teams to collaborate and find solutions to specific problems.
At this meeting, those attendees will share their views, jointly identify the root causes of problems, and offer potential solutions. For this meeting to be effective, they should be encouraged to discuss openly and honestly, avoid blame, and focus on finding answers.
5/ Decision-Making Meetings
These meetings have the goal of making important decisions that affect the direction of the project, the team, or the entire organization. Attendees are usually individuals with the necessary decision-making authority and expertise.
This meeting will need to be provided in advance with all relevant information, needing stakeholders. Then, to ensure that the decisions made during the meeting are carried out, the follow-up actions are established with a completion time.
6/ Brainstorming Meetings
Brainstorming meetings focus on generating new and innovative ideas for your business.
The best part of a brainstorming session is how it promotes teamwork and invention while drawing on the collective intelligence and imagination of the group. Everyone is allowed to express their opinions, draw from one another’s ideas, and come up with original and cutting-edge solutions.
7/ Strategic Management Meetings
Strategic management meetings are high-level meetings that focus on reviewing, analyzing, and making decisions regarding an organization’s long-term goals, direction, and performance. Senior executives and the leadership team attend these meetings, which are held quarterly or yearly.
During these meetings, the organization is reviewed and evaluated, as well as competitiveness or identify new opportunities for growth and improvement.
8/ Project Kickoff Meetings
A project kickoff meeting is a meeting that marks the official start of a new project. It brings together key persons from the project team, including project managers, team members, and stakeholders from other departments, to discuss goals, objectives, timelines, and budgets.
It also provides an opportunity for the project manager to establish clear communication channels, set expectations, and ensure team members understand their roles and responsibilities.
These are some of the most common types of meetings in business, and the format and structure can change depending on the size and type of the organization.
9/ Introductory Meetings
An introductory meeting is the first time team members and their leaders meet each other officially, to determine whether the individuals involved want to build up a working relationship and commit to the team in the future.
This meeting aims to give team members time to stay together to get to know each participant’s background, interests, and goals. Depending on your and your team’s preference, you can set up introductory meetings formal or informal, depending on different contexts.
10/ Town Hall Meetings
This concept originated from local New England town meetings where politicians would meet constituents to discuss issues and legislation.
Today, a town hall meeting is a planned company-wide meeting where management answers questions directly from employees. It allows for open communication and transparency between leadership and staff. Employees can ask questions and get immediate feedback.
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How To Conduct Meetings In Business
In order to have a good meeting, firstly, you must send a meeting invitation email.
Conducting effective meetings in business requires careful planning and preparation to ensure that the meeting is productive and achieves its intended goals. The following advice can help you run productive business meetings:
1/ Define the purpose and goals
Defining the purpose and objectives of a business meeting is critical to ensuring that the meeting is productive and produces the intended outcome. They need to ensure the following:
- The Purpose. Make sure the meeting has a purpose to discuss specific topics, make decisions, or provide updates. You need to define why the meeting is necessary and the expected outcome.
- Objectives. The goals of a business meeting are specific, measurable outcomes you want to achieve by the end of the meeting. They should align with the overall purpose of the meeting with the timeline, KPI, etc.
For example, a meeting to discuss a new product launch should have goals that align with the overall goal of increasing sales or improving market share.
2/ Prepare a meeting agenda
A meeting agenda serves as a roadmap for the meeting and helps keep the discussion focused and on track.
Therefore, by preparing an effective agenda, you can ensure that business meetings are productive and focused and that everyone is aware of what to discuss, what to expect, and what needs to be achieved.
3/ Invite the right participants
Consider who should attend the meeting based on their role and the topics to be discussed. Invite only those who need to be present to ensure that the meeting runs smoothly. Some factors to consider to help select the right attendees include suitability, level of expertise, and authority.
4/ Allocate time effectively
Make sure you allocate enough time for each topic in your agenda, taking into account the importance and complexity of each issue. This will help ensure that all topics get full attention and that the meeting doesn’t go overtime.
Also, you should stick to the schedule as much as possible, but also be flexible enough to make changes if necessary. You might also consider taking short breaks to help participants recharge and refocus. This can maintain the meeting’s energy and interest.
5/ Make the meetings more interactive and engaging
Make business meetings more interactive and engaging by encouraging all participants to speak up and share their thoughts and ideas. As well as using interactive activities, such as live polls or brainstorming sessions and spinner wheels helps keep participants engaged and focused on the discussion.
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Check out: 20+ Online Fun Icebreaker Games for Better Engagement, or 14 Inspiring Games for Virtual Meetings, with the best 6 meeting hacks you can find in 2024!
6/ Meeting Minutes
Taking meeting minutes during a business meeting is an important task that helps document the main discussions and decisions made during the meeting. It also helps improve transparency and ensures that everyone is on the same page before going into the next meeting.
7/ Follow up on action items
By following up on action items, you can ensure that the decisions made during the meeting are put into action and that everyone is clear on their responsibilities.
And ALWAYS gather feedback from the participants to make upcoming business meetings even better – you can share the feedback after wrapping up, via emails or presentation slides. It makes meetings not tedious and everyone has fun💪
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Key Takeaways
Hopefully, with this article of AhaSlides, you can distinguish the types of meetings in business and their purposes. Also by following these steps and best practices, you can help ensure that your business meetings are efficient, focused, and produce the desired results.
Conducting business meetings effectively can help improve communication, collaboration, and success within an organization and is a key component of successful business management.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why meetings are important in business?
Meetings allow for effective communication both downward and upward within an organization. Important updates, ideas and feedback can be shared.
What meetings should a business have?
– All-hands/All-staff meetings: Company-wide meetings to share updates, announcements and foster communication across departments.
– Executive/Leadership meetings: For senior management to discuss high-level strategy, plans and make key decisions.
– Department/Team meetings: For individual departments/teams to sync, discuss tasks and resolve issues within their scope.
– Project meetings: To plan, track progress and resolve blockers for individual projects.
– One-on-ones: Individual check-ins between managers and direct reports to discuss work, priorities and professional development.
– Sales meetings: For the sales team to review performance, identify opportunities and plan sales strategies.
– Marketing meetings: Used by the marketing team for planning campaigns, content calendar and measuring success.
– Budget/Finance meetings: For financial review of expenses vs budget, forecasting and investment discussions.
– Hiring meetings: To screen resumes, conduct interviews and make decisions for new job openings.
– Training meetings: To plan and deliver onboarding, skills development sessions for employees.
– Client meetings: To manage client relationships, feedback and scope out future work.
