How to Facilitate Project Meetings

Facilitating project meetings, especially the project status meeting, is one of the project managers' primary responsibilities. Experienced project managers can make an idea come to life in a meeting. They can build solid team relationships while making decisions to move things forward. Following some basic principles can help you achieve the meeting objectives and steer the discussion effectively.

First, make sure you engage everyone during the discussion to show respect for everyone in the team. ​​​

Then there are some best practices to follow : 

• Encourage participants to join on time. Start the meeting no later than 2-3 minutes. Doing so will let the participants know that the discussion always starts on time.
• Do a time check a few mins before the ending time so that the person talking wraps up his thoughts.
• Use simple language to call for information. Make your message clear; speak slowly, take a pause, and ask questions. 
• Ask for everyone's full participation. This means everyone participates in a meaningful way. Pay attention to introverts, and give them the opportunity and time to share their thoughts. You may consider approaches like receiving comments in writing or calling everyone for their direct participation.
• The person hosting the meeting should take notes and summarize the discussion before the session ends overing the discussion topics, decision made and next steps.  You can consider recording a meeting to catch up with the conversation later.