Are you planning an international business meeting but do you not know where to start? I hear you. It can be difficult if this is your first time. There are a lot of moving parts to consider – especially seeing as a lot of people complain that business meetings are a waste of time. The thing is, they don’t have to be. If you set the right goals and expectations, then people can get a lot from meetings. The question is, how do you do that? That’s what we’re going to spend the rest of this article on.

Do your research

The first thing you need to know is what is expected and considered normal by the different sides of the meeting. Many cultures have entirely different understandings of how businesses function and if the different sides are not aware of that then that can lead to all sorts of misunderstandings.

So do your research. Even better, help people out by sending them a short list of bullet points about what different cultures at the meeting expect and tend to do. For example, what is considered polite and what is considered rude?

Another good area to make sure you take a bit of time to do the research is in the language area. People like it a lot if you can say a few phrases in their language. It really doesn’t matter if you read them from index cards or if you’ve got them memorized. In this way, you can get the meeting started on a positive note.

Get the logistics right

As people will often be traveling from far away to attend such meetings, make sure that you take that into account. Find out what hotels people are staying at (and book them hotels if that’s part of what you’re supposed to be doing). Also, keep in mind jet lag. Some people will struggle more with it than others and it will make it easier or harder for people at some times of day depending on where they came from.  

The best trick is to actually have a checklist. There are plenty of apps that will help you with these. The great thing about a checklist is that you will be able to make sure everything has been arranged and what still needs to be done.

In hospitals checklists save lives. In business meetings, they might save your skin. Now that doesn’t mean you have to spend time writing a thesis statement, but some preparation will certainly help.

Technological compatibility

You will feel so stupid if you get ready to give a presentation only to discover that you don’t have the right format of the file, your laptop doesn’t plug into the local socket or the beamer is not compatible with the tablet you bought.

For that reason, wherever you’re going to have the meeting, call ahead and find out what they support and whether that will meet your needs. Also, it’s a good idea to send these specifications over to the other side if they’re expecting to make use of what’s on offer as well. That way you won’t have to sit around twiddling your thumbs as people fight with the setup at the locale that you’re having the meeting at.

And remember, it’s still a meeting

That means that you have a set of objectives and that you want to reach those in a reasonable amount of time. So make sure you sit down and go through what you’re trying to achieve so that you don’t get blown too far off topic and actually end up with the information you need. Here a checklist can also be a useful strategy.

Also, don’t be afraid to send the list of objectives you have in mind for the meeting to the other party. In this way, they can see what you imagine the meeting will be about and make suggestions of their own. In this way, you’ll often be able to get a lot of the objectives of the meeting out of the way even before the meeting begins! That will be appreciated by everybody and you’ll be able to get onto the sticky points that are the real clincher.

It will take more time

Even with all these facts arranged and sorted out, note that your meetings will probably still take more time. This can be down to cultural barriers, language barriers, logistical problems and more. So take that into consideration. Meetings will often overrun their allotted time. It might be a good idea, therefore, to book the room longer than you think is necessary.

Similarly, make sure that you leave some rubber room to make sure that everything gets dealt with in an effective manner. That way you won’t realize afterward that some questions have not been dealt with and have to fly people in from all over the world again. That won’t be appreciated.