Teleconference tips 4

Start and end the meeting successfully:

1. Start: (5 minutes max) if your team is multi-national, assign one person each meeting to share a story or other information from his home country. If not, ask one person each meeting to start the meeting off with something motivational, funny, or a personal achievement (graduation, birth, new home, promotion, etc.)
2. Review agenda and promise to stick to it
3. End: "self-propelling ending" (HBS publishing) -- end the meeting with

• who will do what by when (any decisions or agreements made during the meeting)
• the date/time of next telecon
• a statement of the team's purpose and a specific reason why this meeting got the team closer to its purpose ("we've hashed out some difficult decisions on the technical requirements and I thank you for your input and candor. Without that, we could have risked some major problems down the line")