If the moment the chocolate biscuits are passed around is the high point of your meetings, a refresher course in chairing skills should go to the top of your agenda.

Chairing a meeting effectively, so that decisions are made and business actually moves on significantly, may seem more like an art than a skill. It demands personal charisma, diplomacy, perceptiveness and an ability to focus. But according to Gordon Bromley, Surrey Chairman of the Academy for Chief Executives, a few simple chairing strategies can make your meetings more meaningful:

1. Be clear about the purpose of the meeting; check at the start what each delegate's expectations are for the outcome and keep it focused on that. It's fundamental, but lack of clarity about the objective is the reason why many meetings fail.

2. If anyone new, or a guest, is attending, provide a brief biography in advance so that delegates know a bit about them.

3. On the morning of the meeting read the papers or listen to the news and find something relevant to the theme of the meeting. Start the meeting by raising this topic to demonstrate that you're on the ball.

4. Delegates will often raise issues which may be important but are off-agenda. Don't get diverted. Acknowledge their importance but mark them on a "parking board" for discussion another time.

5. A good chairman treats each delegate as an individual rather than as if they were all the same: coax the quiet people forward and don't let extroverts dominate.

6. To encourage active listening ask delegates to table at least one question of clarification about the agenda topic before going on to say what they think or give their opinion - it encourages discussion and participation.

7. Never go for more than an hour without an 'energy break'. The energizer should keep everyone involved by building empathy between them. One effective example is to ask each person to spend one minute telling other delegates something about themselves that no-one else would know.

8. Always use a flip chart rather than a projector if you're chairing. Because it's physical, not electronic, it's more involving. Also ask people to summaries their own points on a flip chart, so they can't be passive.

9. It's the chair's role to make sure at the end of meeting that everyone understands what the action points and main conclusions are. Take 10 minutes to summaries the main outputs and agree them before you leave the room.