By Sam Ast, Re-Entry Workforce Development Specialist, Goodwill of Western Missouri & Eastern Kansas
With so much of our working lives spent in meetings, it’s important to ensure your meetings stay productive and beneficial for all involved. As a facilitator, you have a vital role in making meetings successful. If you want to explore how to become a better facilitator and presenter, keep reading.
Define the Necessity
Meetings can be held for a variety of purposes. They can serve as a forum for providing updates to coworkers/supervisors, sharing work products or showcasing project updates. There are myriad ways to lead these gatherings successfully, no matter the motivation behind them.
First, it is crucial that you understand and clearly define why a meeting is necessary. This not only helps you to prepare but also keeps you on track during the meeting itself. Staying on point and adhering to a specific message or argument will ensure your audience remains attentive and will help prevent any confusion or mixed messaging.
Guide the Meeting
When you are the center of focus, it is your responsibility to speak clearly and calmly about the topic at hand. Remember, you are the organizer of the assembly, and attendees will look to you for guidance and direction.
You may wish to begin first by explaining the reasoning behind the meeting as well as the agenda of the proceedings. Meetings often take detours and do not always unfold as planned. Pace yourself and do not rush through key points or speak too quickly. Depending on the context, try to keep the tone and atmosphere lighthearted and friendly. After all, you can still be disciplined and cover serious topics without being a jerk or making others miserable.
Use Visual Aids
As mentioned earlier, meetings can serve a number of functions. No matter your intention, visual aids can help others with comprehension and keep them engaged. Using a slide show format is a great way to project information. When doing so, remember to keep written words to a minimum on each page. Words should be used only as a reference for your talking points. You can also arrive early to set up your computer and screen and to make sure your connections are stable and working properly.
Leave Time For Questions
It’s not a bad idea to leave time for questions or feedback. In fact, hearing directly from your viewers is a perfect chance to fill in the gaps of anything you may have overlooked during your presentation or to clarify any additional information that may be needed. Doing so allows you to read the room and see if your objective was fulfilled. Meetings are goal-oriented, and those present should walk away having learned something.
As always, please don’t hesitate to visit your local Goodwill® career center for more assistance. Whether you need to brush up on your digital skills in order to create a stunning PowerPoint presentation or work in Excel to compile graphs and charts for your next meeting, career advisors, technology instructors, and workforce specialists are there to help with resources both in person and online.
