Success Through Confidence Series Part 27: Conducting Your First Meeting

How to conduct your first office meeting is the kind of question filled with anxiety, bitten nails, and the inevitability of Murphy’s Law – that anything can and will go wrong. Yet in spite of all the things that can go wrong, by concentrating on getting a few key components right you will be able to make a good impression and score enough brownie points to cover over a multitude of blunders and problems.

Here are some champion tips that will help you to learn how to conduct your first office meeting:

1. You need to have a room reserved that is congruent with the intent of your meeting. In other words, if you are planning on hosting a “get to know you” meeting for your new team, choose a setting that is somewhat casual.

2. On the other hand, if you will be delivering bad news during your first office meeting, you want to choose a room that is dignified and conservative.

3. Make sure you have enough seats for everyone who is expected to attend. Reserving rooms in many offices is as simple as putting your name on a list, but it does not hurt to double check the day before the meeting that the room is still reserved in your name!

4. Have all your hardware in place. There is nothing more stressful to the host of the first office meeting than to be unable to showcase the slides you so earnestly prepared.

5. If the computer does not work, the overhead is broken, the easel and whiteboard have gone missing, and there are no dry erase markers to be found anywhere, you will find yourself sweating and holding a meeting that lacks in impact. The day before the meeting, visit the room where the meeting is held and test all the equipment.

6. Be prepared! How to conduct your first office meeting is by being prepared. Have your material in order, so you can access any file, document, graph or slide at a moment’s notice.

7. Memorize significant passages and figures.

8. Anticipate questions, objections, and disagreements and be ready with answers, suggestions, and compromises.

9. Have a plan and follow it. An office meeting needs to be organized. Too many meetings digress as participants go off on tangents, and secondary issues are being dealt with. Instead, type up and print out an agenda that will be given to each participant.

10. Stick to the agenda! It is best to relegate questions to a “questions and answers” session at the end of the meeting.

11. Thank you participants for coming to the meeting. You will be surprised how many meeting hosts forget to thank everyone for stopping what they were doing to attend your meeting. It is a common courtesy that will go a long way.

Interestingly, one item significantly neglected by those who want to learn how to conduct a first office meeting is the art of follow up and follow-through. Check in with those who volunteered for tasks or to whom you assigned anything.