A Guide To Conducting Your First Meeting

Alright! It's time to talk business. I have a very heavy customer facing job and I LOVE IT. I'm on video calls all day, every day, talking about our latest products and technologies. In fact, I went through a year long training on how to interact with customers. Through it, I learned how to give presentations, conduct meetings, handle communications. So I wanted to put up a very basic list of things to do when leading a meeting.

Pre-Meeting

• If you are the one organizing and leading the meeting, make sure to send the meeting invite to all stakeholders.

• In the email, send a quick 1 liner introduction sentence and a short agenda

  Hi All,

  Setting out a calendar invite to go through our [inset topic] presentation. Below is a quick agenda on what I have planned:

  • Introductions

  • [Insert requirements of presentation]

  • Follow-Up

  Let me know if there's anything else you'd like to cover. Looking forward to our sync-up!

  Regards,

  Your Name

• Depending on how high of a priority this meeting is, I will also do additional research on the topic or the people if needed.

• Point being, be prepared beforehand

During - Meeting

• Open with rapport. Ask about their weekends, their days, the weather. Keep it short and sweet. This is super important to do. It helps you develop mutual trust and build interpersonal relationships with your clients/colleagues. (2-5 minutes)

• After building rapport, take charge and thank everyone for coming and talk through the agenda. If it’s your first time meeting some stakeholders, don’t forget to do a round of introductions for everyone on the call.

• Following the intros, it's pretty straightforward in terms of going through the action items. This will be the majority of your meeting. If you’re presenting, be sure to pause for questions and comments.

• End meeting by thanking each one individually & highlighting actions items and follow-ups.

Post-Meeting

• Send a thank you email & update everyone on what was discussed. A lot of times, I’m not able to go through the full list of action items in a call and this is a good time to schedule a follow-up to continue building that relationship.