You’ve scheduled the meeting for 60-minutes. You’ve invited all the right people and they’ve accepted the meeting. You are prepared and feel ready to go – but are you? You review your content and realize you have as many slides as you do minutes to present. How is that going to work?
Your colleague has asked you to update your team on the new concepts for your latest project. You are given 5-minutes on the agenda. You know that to cover these three concepts, even at the most broad level, will take a minimum of 15 minutes. What do you do?
You are leading a brainstorming session with a goal to identify a solution for the problem at hand. You want to make sure that everyone’s voice is heard (all 20 of the people on your team). The meeting is called for 60-minutes. Can you really get to a solution within this timeframe?
The client’s quarterly review meeting is scheduled for two hours. Do you really think you need the full two hours? Is there another way to share the content? There is always another way.
Here are a few tips to help improve on your professional time management skills:
- Leave time for conversation and Q&A, and plan for disruption
- Avoid filling the entire meeting with content
- Remember, meetings rarely start on time. If it is a 30-minute meeting you should expect to have 20-minutes to share content
- Be realistic with what you can accomplish with the time you have.
And lastly, it’s important to remain honest with yourself on the above. Sharing a realistic agenda ahead of time can help avoid these common pitfalls. Cutting corners won’t help the presenter, or the audience.