Meeting Notes

One of the skills I found I was lacking after I became a product manager was maintaining and running a meeting. Unfortunately, this was not clear to me until after burning through a lot of good will.

To remedy that I decided to join Toastmasters, an organization where the members self organize to fulfill different roles in weekly meetings designed to improve the members' communication and leadership skills.

After three meetings, here are some things I learned or gleaned from others' activity.

1) If a meeting is important, touch base with the key players several days in advice to make sure the agenda is understood. If the meeting is not important, re-examine why you are meeting. Perhaps different parties have different needs. Coming to agreement about what the purpose of the meeting will help keep things on track.

2) Respect the time. Going over is disrespectful not only to the people in the meeting, but to the others that are waiting for the members of your meeting. Few people enjoy meetings, so ending on time after a productive session is appreciated by everyone.

3) Take notes. If there are action items, keep track of who is to do what. Follow up on those action items later in the day or week to make sure there were not any mis-communications.

If you get butterflies before talking in front of groups of 10, 20 or 200, here are 10 Tips for Public Speaking.