How to conduct meeting in English

Imagine, you have an important meeting and you’re the chair. It’s the first time you’re chairing a meeting in English. Think about this situation. Would you know that to say to start the meeting, present you main ideals, or summarize you meeting agenda?

In this article you will learn how to chair meeting in English. You can learn useful English words and phrases which you can use in your next meeting.

Now imagine, you are in the meeting room. You need to start the meeting. What will you say?

PART ONE

Welcoming attendees and starting the meeting

Before the meeting start you have to make sure that everyone is paying attention. Do you know how to do this? You could say.

-         If I could have your attention, please.

-         Could I have your attention please?

-         Good afternoon, everyone.

You can also put two this phrases together. For example

-         Good morning everyone, could I have you attention please?

Remember you’re the chair, you need to take charge and lead the meeting. Make a strong to your meeting by using emphasize in your voice. For example in the first phrase we have the word please after the pause at the end. Emphasize the word please to sound formal and show people that you expect them to listen to you. Do it like this.,

-         If I could have you attention, please.

You can also do this for the phrase.

-         Could I have your attention please?

Read the phrase again, when you read it does it sound like a question?

-         Could I have your attention please?

The form is a question but you can read it like a statement. This makes you sound formal and show people that you need them to pay attention to you now. After you have everyone attention, it’s time to welcome attendees and get thing started.

Welcoming attendees.

Here are some good general phrases to use.

-         I’d like to welcome you all here today now let’s get down to business.

In this phrase “get down to business” means being discussing the important information

-         Thank you all for coming.

Perhaps we can make a start.

-         Thanks everyone and welcome today’s meeting. Let’s begin.

If this is you first time meeting these people, you could also introduce yourself. If there are other presenter in the meeting. This is also the time to introduce them. For example.

-         I’d like to welcome you all here today, my name is Saleh Njohole and I’m the Marketing Manager, and this is John and he’s the head of the designing department. Now let’s get down to business.

-         Thank you all for coming. My name’s Njohole and I’m the Marking Manager. I’m sure you all know Dasha, who’s in charge of web content. Perhaps we can make a start.”

-         “Thanks everyone and welcome today’s meeting. I’m Saleh Njohole, the Marketing Manager. This is Jess, from the accounts department, and she’ll also be presenting today. Let’s begin.”

Next we have to introduce the Topic. And talk about the items on the Agenda.

PART TWO

Introducing the topic and outlining the agenda.

After you welcomed everyone to the meeting you want to make sure they have a clear idea of what you’ll be discussing. This can also help you to stay organized through the meeting.

First you have to introduce the overall topic of the meeting. Then introduce the agenda of the meeting. All the key points you will be discussing.

-         “Today meeting is about_____________.....

We’ll talk about____________” or

-         “The aim of this meeting is to ______________...

We’ll go over_____________”

When you go over something what do you thing that means? It means to analyze and look at something carefully. You can also use cover. For example.

-         “In today’s meeting, we’ll go over_____________” or

-         “In today’s meeting, we’ll cover____________”

These are both useful when you we discuss the agenda.

Now it’s turn to practice beginning the meeting.

Start

1.     Get the attendee’s attention then

2.     Welcome the attendees and get the meeting started finally

3.     Introduce the topic and outline your agenda.

I will give you an example.

-         “Good morning everyone, if I could have your attention please, I’d like to welcome you all to the meeting today. Let’s begin. The aim of this meeting is to talk about the marketing strategies for the next few months.

We’ll go over our budget, goals, and welcome the new hires.”

Let’s move to the main part of the meeting.

PART THREE

Getting through the agenda.

Now you are get into the most important part of the meeting. Presenting your main ideas. How you do this depends on what you talking about. But there are some general rules that you can always use.  You have to begin with the first item in your agenda. To do this use the phrase like.

-         So, let’s start with___________ or

-         The first  item on the agenda is ________________

After you phrase like you’ll present and discuss the agenda item.

For example.

-         So, let’s start with some new business: marketing strategies.

-         The first item on the agenda is how we can make our online advertisement more effective.

After you have discussed this first topic. You need to let attendee know that you finished and now discussion should move forward. How can you do this? A simple closing statement will be good.

-         I think that covers the first/second/third item.

-         If nobody has anything else to add, we can continue to the next item.

Now you can move on to the next point. Here some useful phrases for this:-

-         Let’s move on to the next item:___________

-         Now we come to the ________________

-         The final item on the agenda is _______________.

Using the word like next or final can be very helpful. It helps everybody understand you are and what you doing. Let see how to use this in some full sentences.

-         Let’s move on the next item: the marketing budget for these new strategies.

-         Now we come to main challenge: How to get 100,000 new contacts in the next few months.

-         The final item on the agenda is to welcome our new hires: James in Finance and Debra in HR.

You can repeat this steps until you covered all of the items on your agenda.

Now it’s you turn, imagine your chairing a meeting at your company.

Practice:

1.     Write down three agenda items.

2.     Practice using different English phrases to introduce each item.

Next we’re going to look at attendee participation in the meeting.

PART FOUR

Inviting attendees to participate.

As a chair one of your responsibilities is to make sure each attendee is getting a chance to express their ideas and take part in discussions. What can you say to bring other into the discussion? You can ask a question like.

-         ______________, what’s your opinion on this?

-         Would you like to share your thoughts in this question?

-         Could you add anything to our ideas here?

These are good phrases to make sure all attendees have a chance to participate. Also as a chair you may have other attendees who need to present their ideas or lead discuss for part of the meeting. When you want to hand over to another attendee, you use phrases like:-

-         ________, would you like to introduce this item?

-         I’d like to turn it over to ___________ who is going to lead in the next point.

-         Alright, now __________ will have the floor.

Just add the person names to use these phrases. For example.

-         Njohole, would you like to introduce this item?

However, there could a problem there. What if some of the attendee talk to long?  Or start going off topic.

PART FIVE

Dealing with distractions and staying on topic.

Nobody like meeting which going on too long right! To be a good chair you need to keep people focus on the agenda and avoid distractions. When some speaking for too long there are good professional phrases that you can use.

-         Let’s not get too far off-topic here.

-         We can discuss that at the end if you feel it’s important.

-         I don’t think that’s relevant to today’s discussion.

If someone talk about the topic that will be good to discuss at later time you can use the phrase like:-

-         Shelve it

-         Table it

This means that want to talk about it but in the future.

-         I thing we should shelve that until next time.

-         Good point, but let’s table it until the next meeting.

At this you get through your agenda, you make sure that everyone has a chance to speak. And stay on topic. Great! But you have one more job.

PART SIX

Summarizing and concluding the meeting.

Once you finish discussing everything, you need to summarize your key points. Here you can things likes.

-          Before we close, let me just summarize the main points.

-         To sum up….

-         In brief…

-         Shall I go over the main points?

Then use verbs like:-

-         Discussed

-         Went over

-         Talked about

to list the item from the meeting: for example.

-         “To sum up, we discussed using the new internet marketing strategies and cutting the budget by $1,000 next month. We also talked about our new sales goals and increasing our traffic. Finally, we welcomed James and Debra to the company.”

Now it’s time to finish up. Here you should show that you finished and ask for any final questions.

To finish simple phrases like these are effective.

-         OK, it looks like we’ve covered the main items for the meeting today.

-         Right. That’s all for today’s meeting.

Don’t forget to ask if there are any final question from attendees. This will them to clarify anything they didn’t understand and make any final points.

-         Is there any other business?

-         Are there any questions before we finish?

Let’s see an example for concluding the meeting.

-“To sum up, we discussed using the new internet marketing strategies and cutting the budget by $1,000 each month. We also talked about our sales goals and increasing our site traffic. Finally, we welcomed James and Debra to the company. Right, that’s all for today’s meeting. Are there any questions before we finish? No? Great, I’d like to thank Bob, our CEO, for coming here all the way from Dar es Salaam. Thank you all for attending. That’s all for today.”

Now you know to chair meeting from beginning to the end.

Good Luck!