Acquired Soft Skills: The Key to Easy-Breezy Meetings

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Topics: Communications Management, Leadership, New Practitioners, Teams

Have you ever been in a meeting that was so awkward it made you want to jump out of your seat and head for the door? We certainly have, but we’ve learned from them and we want to teach you what we’ve learned.

Project meetings are where team ideas are exchanged, decisions are made, and objectives turn into successes or failures. It is the project manager’s responsibility to create a structured, efficient and prosperous meeting environment for stakeholders. In this article, we outline soft skills required by a PM to ensure that a meeting promotes this successful environment. We will move beyond the meeting agenda to outline general rules—the do's and don’ts of a successful project meeting.

Meeting Initiation
At the start of any meeting, there is often a short amount of time when your attendees are either slowly joining you in person or dialing in to a teleconference number. Without a proper plan for this early meeting time, you can find yourself with uncomfortable silence, broken only by the beep of a new attendee calling in.

DO...

• Arrive Early: This shows your attendees that you are respectful of their time by being ready to start as soon as they arrive. It will also encourage them not to show up late. If you find yourself having trouble arriving early, try setting your start time a few minutes later. Then you can arrive at 9 and…

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