Why Follow-Up Meetings Are Important
Why Follow-Up Meetings Are Important
One of the hardest things to do is to accurately gauge the effect of your meeting. Most people do an evaluation at the end of the meeting which really only finds out if people “liked the meeting” but doesn’t find out what they’ve learned from the meeting.
So the first thing you need to do is to think about why you want to follow-up and that will determine what follow-up is best to do.
If what you want from the follow-up is to find out if people liked a new format you use to then an evaluation at the meeting can be adequate.
If you are looking to find out how people are applying what you taught at a meeting, then you’re better off to do an e-mail, phone call, or face-to-face evaluation of week or two after the event. This will allow you to ask how they are applying what they learned, what difference there seen that make, and what additional questions they have said they have been utilized in the new knowledge.
If you just want to make sure at the end of the meeting that people know how to utilize what you shared, you can break them into groups two and ask them to share with each other what they learned and how do they expect to apply it when they leave the room. Then pull the group got together is a large group, gather their information, correct any misunderstandings people may have had, and summarize the action they are to take.
The biggest mistake most people make is not thinking about why they are doing the follow-up so they make sure they get what they want out of the follow-up. So always ask, “What is the primary purpose of my follow-up and what will best help me achieve that goal?”
Anne’s book, Outcome Focus® Approach: How to Structure Your Message so They Hear It has a lot of examples structuring your message to get the best outcome. Go to the Store tab and click on Books.