40 Essential Phrases To Host A Meeting in English

Well hey there! I'm Emma from mmmEnglish!

Have you ever led a meeting in English?

Can you imagine yourself hosting a meeting at work

completely in English?

I've created this lesson today to help you learn lots of

useful and essential phrases to help you lead a meeting

in English.

Make sure you download the workbook

that I've created for you so you can keep

all of these phrases and these expressions with you

during your meetings, during your conversations

so that you can put them into practice.

Are you ready to get started?

Ladies, if you want a safe and supportive space

to practise your speaking skills among friends,

to share your opinions and to learn how to host

meetings before you're at work

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It doesn't matter whether your meeting is a social or

a professional meeting, whether it's online or it's in person,

there are some elements that will always be the same

no matter what style or type of meeting you're hosting.

And at the start of any meeting it is essential that you greet

and welcome participants.

There are a few different phrases and expressions you can use

to do it. It can be as simple as:

Hello everybody and welcome!

Good morning, I'd like to thank everyone for coming today.

If your meeting has less than ten people at it,

make sure that everyone is introduced.

If there's more than ten people,

the introductions can kind of drag on a bit,

you might need to take it out or do it differently.

But introductions really do help break the ice

and people feel more comfortable

speaking up and sharing their opinions when they know

the other people in the room.

Now when you know some but not all of the participants

at the meeting, you could say:

I know most of you but I see a few unfamiliar faces.

Let's do a round of introductions.

So that means

let's just go around in a circle so everyone can say their name.

What about when it's an entirely new group of people?

You don't know anyone.

Before we get started,

let's go around the table and introduce ourselves.

If you're at work or

at a conference or in some professional setting,

you can ask everyone to say their name, their role

and the company that they work for.

Please just say your name, your role and the organisation

that you're from.

And if it's a more informal social setting like maybe

you're hosting an online book club meeting

or a meeting with a group of neighbours for the first time

then say:

Share your name, where you're from

and perhaps an interesting fact about yourself.

Hi I'm Emma from Perth, Western Australia and

I've lived in every Australian city.

This is especially useful if the meeting that you're hosting

is online and the people who are joining you are spread out

all over the world. It can be really interesting to find out

where everybody else actually is, it's a great way

to spark some small talk before things get too serious.

So there are three essential steps to kick-start

a successful meeting.

The first is to start by stating the goal or the purpose

of the meeting.

The second is to make sure you outline the agenda

or talk about the different things that everyone is

here to discuss.

And the third is to set any ground rules before the meeting

to make sure it runs smoothly, that there's no interruptions.

So let's take a closer look at some useful phrases that can help

you to move through these three important steps.

It's important for everyone at the meeting to have

an expectation of how the meeting is going to be run

and what they're going to get out of it.

So start by stating the goal

or the purpose of the meeting.

Our goal today

is to plan the social media strategy for March and for April.

Or you can focus on the outcome that you'd like to achieve.

By the end of this session,

everyone will know how to use the new accounting software.

And if you want to sound a little more casual then you could say:

We're here today to talk about George Orwell's novel 1986.

If you have an agenda for the meeting,

now's the time to go over it.

I'll just draw your attention to the agenda.

We've got a few things to get through today.

And then of course you would name all of the important things

on the agenda.

And if there's no agenda, it's a good chance to just

tell the participants how the meeting or this session

is going to be structured.

What are the different sections of the meeting?

This way everyone is going to know what to expect

and it will be easier for you to transition between topics

and get through everything that needs to be discussed.

Discourse markers and signposting language really

comes in handy here.

Words like first,

second, then,

after that, next and finally.

Something like this.

The first item on the agenda is social media.

And then we'll move on to item number two which is

customer satisfaction.

And then we'll take a look at customer feedback.

And finally, we'll discuss the new marketing strategy.

And of course, when you're hosting a meeting

it never hurts to go over some of the ground rules.

Sometimes we refer to this part of the meeting as

housekeeping.

Housekeeping in this context doesn't mean

cleaning or maintaining a house.

In a meeting, we commonly use this phrase

to talk about the administrative

parts of a meeting, the part of the meeting where you

lay the rules out and you explain how things are going to run.

We just have to get through some housekeeping first.

Now saying this is a great way to transition away from

the introductions and the agenda

and to talk about what you expect from everyone

for the duration of the meeting.

You might ask them to switch off their phones.

If you have your phone with you,

please take a moment just to turn it on silent or to switch it off,

just so we don't have any disruptions.

Or you could let them know what to do if they have a question.

If you have any questions outside of the agenda

just save them for the end.

If you're running an online meeting this is especially important

just to make it easy and manageable for everyone.

If you have any questions during our discussion today

please just use the raised hand reaction

or raise your hand so I can see it on screen.

Feel free to share your comments and your questions in the chat

and please make sure you put your microphones on mute

to keep disruptions to a minimum.

When you're running a meeting, part of your job is to manage

and control the discussion. You want it to be effective.

Sometimes you might need to prompt people

to get the conversation started.

To kick things off, why don't we brainstorm a few ideas together.

I think it's best to ask some general questions that are

open for everyone to answer rather than

singling people out initially.

You could try asking for their opinion with one of these phrases.

What does everyone else think?

What are your thoughts on the survey results?

I'd like to get your input on the new design.

Sometimes you put a question like that out there

and no one answers.

So then you might need to call out a specific name

just to encourage someone to share their point of view.

What do you think about that, Amy?

Now what about when you need to ask for clarification?

A really great way to do that is to ask for a bit more detail.

Can you explain that in a bit more detail?

Would you mind going over that again, please?

To go over means to explain something in a detailed

or a more careful way

or you can paraphrase what you think a person wants to say

or what you think you heard them say.

And it's a really useful conversation skill generally

but in a meeting, it's good to check

that you understood someone, that you heard them correctly

without asking them to repeat it

so this is a really great way to do that.

So what you're saying is you're not really concerned about

the deadline as long as the job's done well,

is that correct?

Another similar phrase is something like:

If I understood correctly,

you're saying that all of these figures are incorrect.

Perhaps it might be useful to rephrase what someone else said

maybe in a way that's a little simpler for everyone to understand.

So in other words, the report won't be finished on time.

When you're leading a meeting it is super important

that you keep the meeting on track

by keeping track of time.

Nobody likes meetings that drag on or they run over time.

If you're running the meeting it's your job to practise

effective time management.

Now you could always ask anyone else

to keep an eye on the time

but you may not always have that help.

So in those situations, you can say:

If nobody has anything else to add, let's move on.

I'm conscious of time.

Sometimes you might even have to cut the discussion short

in order to make time for other things that you've got to talk

about on the agenda.

I'm sorry, but I have to stop you there.

And you could follow that with:

We're running out of time so we have to move on.

Sometimes when the conversation is flowing really well,

it's easy to get sidetracked or to go off-topic

or to go off track.

A good way to keep the conversation moving

in the right direction is to say:

I'm afraid we don't have time to talk about that in today's

meeting. We'll add that on to the agenda for next week.

You might like to summarise the key points of the meeting

so that everyone else walks away

with a clear idea of what happened.

Let me briefly summarise what we discussed today.

And at this point, you can also mention any specific

tasks that people at the meeting agreed to do.

We've all agreed that Aman will write the report.

After you've summarised the main points you'd thank everyone

for coming, for their time, for their participation at your meeting.

Thank you so much for your time and your participation today.

The thank you at the end of a meeting is usually the sign that

the meeting is over, that you're starting to wrap up.

And if you have a future meeting planned

now is a good time to mention it.

The next meeting is on Tuesday so I'll see you all then.

And you might sign off with something friendly,

either in an online meeting or in person you could say:

Have a great day everyone.

Or have a great week.

So that's it! I hope you enjoyed this lesson and that you feel

more confident about hosting your next meeting in English.

Make sure you save or you print the PDF that I created for you

so that you can keep it with you during your meetings,

during your online conversation so that you can start

using these expressions fluently.

And ladies don't forget, if you want to practise hosting meetings

in a supportive space with friends

come and put your skills into practice inside Hey Lady!

Thank you so much for joining me today.

Have a great week my lovely students.

See you in the next lesson!