If you are planning a meeting, the skills of knowing how to host professional meeting, can be greatly appreciated.
The plan
The main part of the plan is, of course, the purpose. You must know, what you are trying to accomplish. Try to spend few minutes in your mind trying to clarify the "why" of the meeting. After that, you need to ensure the meeting will achieve the goal.
For this, putting together an agenda would be great. Agenda helps you and others prepare for the meeting.
Ask participants to review the agenda and come prepared.
If you do not prepare an agenda, the participants will come to the meeting with their own. Is that where you want it to go?
An agenda consists of topics to be covered, including assignments and who should cover the topics, time estimates for each topic, start and end times. Ensure you always leave a little extra for each discussion.
The agenda should include the meeting location and list of attendees, so that they are aware. Do not announce the meeting, until you have all the above information on hand and prepared. Do not shoot out an e-mail prematurely, so that you do not have to send two or three messages. This may make you look unorganised.
When scheduling a meeting, try to ensure it is convenient for most important players. It is a good advise, to come up with three meeting times on different days, at different time of the day, than ask people for their availability.
In big organisations or formal environments, you need to be aware of formal sitting rules. These are not complicated arrangements, however, there is few things to consider:
Do not sit where the most important person or host plans to sit. This will generally be the head of the table. If the person already sits, you can sit elsewhere. If not, you may wait until they are seated,
The bosses (hosts) assistant will probably sit on their right side,
If you are the meeting host or planner give others polite directions where to sit, for example: "Julia, why don't you sit here?", "Mr Brown, please be seated at the head of the table",
If you realised that you have made a mistake sitting and someone is giving you "the look" say: Mr. John, would you like to sit here?".
If you are the host, you are in charge to ensure that the meeting goes smoothly. Arrive little early. Meeting should not be delayed more than 5 minutes and any late attendees should advise upfront they would be late.
You, as the host are also responsible to keeping the meeting on track. This includes preventing participants interrupting one another. Make it clear at the beginning, that they should not interrupt each other while speaking.
You may also request (in more formal meetings) that if a participant wants to say something, they need to raise their hand. (Yes, like at school - this is actually a Robert's rule developed in 1876 for parliament.) Than, once the participant is recognised, you can say
"Carla, you have the floor to present your point of view".
If someone attempts to interrupt, you as a host have the right to remind everyone politely about the rules. You may say
" Thank you, Harry, however, you will have the floor shortly, let's let Carla finish".The moderator should also watch for those who talk for too long.
You may say : "Carla, I think we have heard enough to understand your position. I would like to recognise Harry now and hear hat he has to say".
The speaker should also end the speech with "I am finished".
In some meetings, participants would be invited to voting. In this situation, encourage participants to say "Aye" if in favour, and "Nay" if opposed.
If the discussion in the meeting starts getting out of the topic, the host should suggest that this can be taken to another meeting.
Finally, as the moderator, you need to take notes. It is a very important part of any effective meeting. In the notes, include time and date of the meeting, the participants, agenda and discussion about each topic, any decisions or votes made and the results.
Kind participation
If you are a participant of a meeting, don't ever be that person who comes late and start asking about the topics which were already discussed!
If you ever arrive late (but, don't let this happen) keep quiet.
Wasting others time by being late, is extremely rule. If you are going to be late, call, apologise and let them know when you will arrive. Afterwards, send apology to the person who chaired the meeting.
As the participant, you must follow the rules that was made clear. The best way, would be to adopts the rules above, in case you are unsure.
You must never interrupt other speakers.
You should also stay for the entire meeting, unless you have another commitment. If that is the case, let the host know at the begging when you need to leave, than leave quietly at the time.
If for any reason, meeting is running longer than expected and you have other commitments, note to the host of your other commitmnets, stand up, excuse yourself and leave quietly.
Always think before you speak and weight your words carefully. And stick to the agenda. If you repeat yourself or banter, it is considered offensive to everyone else on the meeting. Additionally, do not act rush. If you are watching your phone and looking at the watch all the time, you are clearly showing that you are distracted and not listening.
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