Five ways to raise your influence in a meeting

Do you get worked up over big presentations? Do you spend hours trying to create the perfect content and more hours practicing your delivery? Practice and planning will help you feel more confident in that one situation. If you succeed, people are more likely to trust what you say and pay closer attention to the work you do, but you have the potential for greater influence because of how you prepare for smaller presentations that happen more often.

One such speaking situation you may encounter frequently is a meeting. Whether the meeting takes place in person or virtually, you can leverage your communication skills to help make the meeting worthwhile and increase your influence.

If you are one of those people who hates meetings, you may have experienced more than your share of ineffective ones. Common reasons cited for loathing meetings are: they are poorly run, the facilitator doesn’t use time effectively, they are too frequent, and most importantly, there is little opportunity to participate. 

Whether you are the facilitator or a participant, you can help set the tone and model ideal practices for making  meetings more effective. The following tips can turn meeting haters into meeting lovers.

1. Prepare for the meeting

First, go into the meeting prepared by reviewing the agenda and documents prior to the meeting.

Jeff Bezos believes preparing for a meeting is so important that he implemented the practice for Amazon employees to spend the first 30 minutes in the meeting silently reading a six-page memo to prepare for that meeting. His purpose was to help people focus on what they would be discussing and ensure they knew the purpose. 

An agenda can help ensure everyone knows the purpose for that meeting. If there is no agenda, speak up before the meeting and ask for or create one. 

If an important proposal will be discussed or introduced, use some of your prep time to draft a proposal or rationale on the topic. More than likely, you will be one of the few that is prepared. If you have something prepared to share, it is more likely to be considered and may be adopted.

2. Consider meeting members

Secondly, know who the decision-makers are.Review the list of individuals invited to the meeting. If the decision-makers are in the meeting, plan questions or comments with them in mind. This will help you be alert at the beginning when everyone else is just warming up.

3. Structure comments

Third, in meetings when you need to give an update on a project, keep things moving and avoid lag time by using the same structure each time to organize your points. One structure I recommend is: Recent, Next, Questions (RNQ). R: Identify the most recent work you have done and explain how it will move the project forward. N: Describe what you will do next. Q: Identify any needs you have for completing the project and ask questions.. For example, if you need volunteers, more resources, help from another department, access to documents, increased budget, if it is an appropriate time to ask, then ask. If you have developed a rationale for the ask and others value what you have proposed, they will appreciate that you have considered what it will take to accomplish the work. Asking saves time and asking for something in person is a more persuasive tactic than asking online.

4. Take notes and summarize

Fourth, listen well and take your own notes. If you take your own notes, you can help summarize points discussed (a promotion strategy) and document votes. Even if you are not the official minute taker, your notes can be valuable when you need to review meeting notes to work with another group.

5. Speak up, but be brief

Fifth, keep comments brief, energetic, and speak up quickly to avoid lag time. If extending meetings beyond the reserved time has become a practice, ask for a hard stop time and state that you will need to leave at the designated time. If the group agrees to a hard stop, members will be more focused throughout the meeting. Model the practice of keeping your comments brief, organized, and on-topic. (Having documents to reference can help with brevity and organization.) Finally, speak up quickly when you have something to say. This minimizes lag time as well and sets a cadence for the meeting rhythm.

If you are someone who gives a few presentations a year but sits in meetings almost every day, apply these tips to turn dreaded meetings into productive ones.