One of the most common things in the business world is meetings. There are meetings for everything and for every department and of course, there’s always a leader in front of the group who is responsible for holding an effective meeting.
But holding a meeting isn’t easy and you have to be respected and to genuinely influence and inspire the rest of the team in order for the meeting to have a great impact. Otherwise, nothing will really change.
Therefore, in order to hold outstanding meetings, you have to increase your influence at meetings. But how exactly will does one increase his influence? What kind of person he had to be and what must he do in order to influence more the team into taking action and working harder on the company’s goals?
Well, that’s exactly what we will find out in today’s post – how to increase your influence at meetings. Stick with us and find out what are the 7 simple rules to follow to achieve this goal.
1. Be Confident and Set an Example!
I believe that there’s no easier and better way to increase your influence than by becoming a genuinely confident person and a real example for your team members and, in fact, everyone. First of all, there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance and many people are arrogant believing that they’re actually confident.
You see confidence kind of goes hand in hand with wisdom and knowledge. If you aren’t knowledgeable you can’t really be wise, and if you aren’t really wise you can’t really be confident.
How is that so, well think about it – confidence means to really trust and believe in your skills and powers. Therefore, you must have strong reasons why you’re feeling confident and when you are genuinely aware of your powers you won’t feel the need to prove yourself or look down on others like arrogant people do.
Setting an example is the key to influence people, according to a top essay writing service review. You can’t influence persons who don’t want to be like you, who don’t admire you for who you are, what you stand for, and what you do. It’s simple logic.
Therefore, to increase your influence would be enough to become confident and set a real example.
2. Create the Perfect Outline of the Meeting
You can’t hold a meeting without knowing its main points of discussion the same as a writer can’t write a novel without making its outline first. If you don’t create a perfect plan and outline of the meeting it will be a total waste of time and money.
You must have an agenda with the man points of discussion and know what exactly the problem and possible solutions, advice the experts from Superiorpapers. At a meeting you don’t have time to brainstorm – that’s not the purpose of a meeting.
As well, time is precious for everyone in the room, so no one will have time to wait for you to find your words or to think about what other things you have to discuss. Creating a plan will not only save you time, but it will make any meeting efficient and you’ll avoid leaving things out.
Not to mention that knowing what you will talk about and how to present every matter will win you respect for being extremely organized, which also shows that you care about your team members time. And when people see an organized person, who knows what he is doing at a meeting they tend to look up to it which means that you’ll have more influence over them, according to Livecareer.
3. Invite the Right People and Know their Interests
Meetings are well known for being time-wasting activities as well as one of the main reasons why is because too many people are attending at a meeting and sometimes, no matter how old you are you can get bored and distract other persons and give the leader a hard time to hold the meeting, as stated by essay writing service reviews.
Therefore, an effective meeting should have 10 persons maximum. These persons should be the most important ones and they will have to be able to send the message further to their teams. Inviting everyone at the meeting isn’t necessary nor effective and hurting someone’s feelings for not inviting them at a meeting is not your problem because is not about them – it’s about efficiency.
Now that you selected a hand full of capable persons you have to know what their interests are, the reason why they want and need to attend the meeting. You have to present the meaning and importance of the meeting to make them feel like the time you take from their schedule is beneficial to them.
As well, knowing and naming their interests will assure you that they will pay attention to every word you say and will keep their focus straight on the matter so the meeting will unfold as smoothly as possible, advice Dissertation.
4. Master Body Language
Body language is a very interesting topic. I’d like to call it both a science and an art because of the way it works. I believe that we’d all be kind of super-humans if we’ll become masters in body language.
But there are only a few hands of people who truly know how to control their body language and read others body language really well. And that few people are probably the most influential people you’ll ever meet in your life because they’ll know what you think and feel only by taking a good look at you and studying your behaviour.
Of course, you don’t have to master this skill extremely well to leverage the benefit of becoming more influential as it works like this: the more skilled you are at controlling your body language and at reading others’ body language the more influence you’ll have over people, according to the best dissertation writing services.
5. Hold Short and Efficient Meetings
As I stated above, meetings have a bad reputation and they have it for a good reason – they always last too long and after all, they don’t even prove to be efficient as nothing really changes after one meeting. Therefore, the two main goals you have to keep in mind when you hold a meeting is to keep it short (and on point) and efficient (and productive).
Once you succeed to keep such a meeting your influence will increase severely as you will no longer waste other people time and the short time will be in everyone’s benefit, advice Grademiners review.
6. Speak on Point and Let other Express their Opinion
Many people when they hold a meeting they lose the line of conversation and simply forget their point, that’s why when you speak you should always speak on point – meaning that you should always start with your point and then present how you are going to achieve it.
Remember, time is precious for everyone so everything that is not a point of interest for the ones attending the meeting, not even a single detail, is not worth mentioning. Now if someone has something to say let them speak but only after you made your point.
Letting others speak is good because you really allow them to feel involved and like their opinion really matter, according to Papers Owl review. And, after all, who knows, someone might come with a really insightful idea that is actually better than yours. And that’s the purpose of a team, to have more smart brains not only one in the lead.
7. Summarize Before You Finish
At the end of the meeting, after you discussed all that had to be discussed you have to make sure that the attendants keep in mind the main points of the meetings and the things you established very clearly.
Therefore, before you “call it a day” summarize all the main things you discuss and who in charge with what so there will be no misunderstandings. While you may understand why this is important you may wonder how is this going to increase your influence.
Well, it’s pretty simple once you give it a thought. This proves that you care for things to unfold perfectly and you are doing your job as you’re supposed to and people respect this kind of patience and professionalism. And with respect influence follows.
Influence has to be won and it’s a really hard thing to be won, so don’t look for hacks and shortcuts as there are none. Great things come in time, with hard work, and a lot of patience. Therefore, work on yourself, become a genuinely confident and knowledgeable person and wait for the perks to follow as there’s not only influence that these amazing traits will bring you.
Follow these 7 simple rules and you’ll be the most influential person in the company. But in all the hustle to increase your influence remember to take care of your bony and mental health. As well, take it easy because you won’t miss any train and overwhelming yourself will only slow you down.
- 7 Simple Rules to Increase Your Influence at Meetings - September 25, 2019
- 7 Reflective Questions to Unleash Your True Potential - September 4, 2019
- How to Find a Soulmate and Why it Matters - August 27, 2019
