Business Meeting Etiquette

Business etiquette is essentially about building relationships with colleagues, clients or customers. In the business world, it is these people that can influence your success or failure. Etiquette, and in particular business etiquette, is simply a means of maximising your business potential by presenting yourself favourably.Business meetings are one arena in which poor etiquette can have negative effects. By improving your business meeting etiquette you automatically improve your chances of success. Comfort, trust, attentiveness and clear communication are examples of the positive results of demonstrating good etiquette.The article will focus on a few key examples of business meeting etiquette for both formal and informal business meetings. Although these are meant as guides to etiquette in the UK they are very much applicable to other nations too.

Good meetings allow people in an organization or on a team to learn what everyone else is doing, what each person’s responsibilities are and what progress is being made.  They can be empowering to individuals, helpful in developing leadership skills and morale boosters for the company.

Bad meetings, those without a focus, a clear agenda or proper planning, can undermine morale and create dissatisfaction.

When meetings get off track, here are seven simple steps for effective meetings to bring them back.

Be prepared.  Meetings are work so work on them.  The more preparation that goes into a meeting, the more effective it will be.

Have an agenda: The agenda does not need to be lengthy or complicated.  A listing of the items to be addressed and by whom is sufficient.  The key is to get the agenda out ahead of time so everyone comes prepared. If you can’t decide on an agenda, could be you don’t need a meeting.

Pay attention to the time:  Start and end when you say you will.  Assigning time to each agenda item and having someone responsible for watching the clock is a helpful way to stay on schedule.

Have fewer meetings:  Consider if you can get the work done without a meeting.  You may be able to handle the issue with a phone call or e-mail.  When quantity decreases, quality will increase.

Carefully choose the participants.  It is important to have all points of view and a variety of participants, but be sure that everyone at the meeting has a good reason to be there.

Stay focused.  If the discussion starts to wander from the agenda, bring it back to the business at hand as quickly as possible.

Get feedback:  You may want to provide an evaluation form at the end of the meeting or if the group is small, you may find it easier to poll the participants. Ask what went well, what went wrong and what can be done to improve the next meeting.