Managing Meetings
Successfully!
By: Lara Hudson
Staff meetings are essential to the successful running of a nursery or school. But how often do you
find that too much time is spent in meetings? Or perhaps you meet and there is no purpose to the
discussion that you have.
A well-run meeting is a productive way to communicate with your wider team. But when managing a
meeting, it is essential that you are always in control of proceedings.
Preparing for meetings
Successful meetings are always well prepared for. When preparing make sure that you have asked
yourself these key questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
What is the meeting for?
Why is the meeting being called?
How will I know if it has been successful?
Who are the right people to attend?
By answering these questions, you will start to build purpose for the meeting by identifying the success
criteria for it. Even if you have not been able to make final decisions, you should at least have a plan of
action and next steps in place.
Ensure that you always enter a meeting with an agenda. Ideally this should have been circulated to all
attendees prior to the meeting, to enable them to add any notes or thoughts that they might have.