Will Your Meet­ing Time Be Time Well Spent?

One of the most dif­fi­cult tasks in hold­ing a high-qual­i­ty meet­ing is man­ag­ing your time. That’s par­tic­u­lar­ly true at EDS, where sched­ules are com­pressed, and you’ll be attend­ing mul­ti­ple meet­ings through­out the day.

Good time man­age­ment begins with arriv­ing on the dot. ​“To have a suc­cess­ful and enjoy­able EDS, be respect­ful of everyone’s time,” says Hol­ly Good, nation­al dis­tri­b­u­tion man­ag­er for Cor­nell Dubili­er Elec­tron­ics. And just because your meet­ing is sched­uled from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., doesn’t mean you need to wring out every last minute and be late to your next meet­ing. Start on time and end ear­ly, Ms. Good advis­es. ​“We’re allot­ted an hour, but I keep all my meet­ings to about 50 minutes.”

Prepa­ra­tion is essen­tial, stress­es Woody Wilder, vice pres­i­dent of sales for Mura­ta Amer­i­ca. ​“Sched­ule your meet­ings times, con­fer­ence rooms and top­ics …as much in advance as possible.” 

And keep your eyes on the prize. Struc­ture your meet­ing in terms of what you want to achieve. Then keep the meet­ing focused firm­ly on those objec­tives. ​“You real­ly have to know… what you’re going to talk about so you can man­age the time, the agen­da and the results,” advis­es Steven Fish­er, chair­man & CEO of PEI-Genesis.

And remem­ber: It’s vital that you take the time to fol­low up after your meet­ing. Keep the con­ver­sa­tion going!