Some meetings definitely could have been emails. However, others simply have to happen.
Instead of feeling terrified every time you spot a new event in your virtual calendar, you can learn to at least tolerate the neverending meetings you have to hold or attend.
All you have to do is elevate your communication skills and learn what language to use in meetings.
That’s why today we’re going over the most useful business meeting phrases you need in your arsenal to get through any type of meeting.
Let’s dig in!
Table of Contents
Phrases to use if you are holding a meeting
You’ve scheduled a call, invited your team members, and now you have just enough time to sit on pins and needles while waiting for the meeting to start.
There are plenty of reasons to be anxious about a meeting — especially if you’re hosting it.
Maybe you plan to communicate a change to your team, but you’re worried about whether you’re enough of an effective communicator to stop the team from rioting against you.
Alternatively, perhaps you need to tell your team that you can’t meet the deadline for your task or project.
Either way, no matter your business meeting agenda, if you’re so panicked that you don’t even know where to start, we are here to throw you a lifeline. From opening a meeting to waving your teammates goodbye, we’ve listed all the business phrases you might need for meetings.
Let’s start at the top — with business meeting phrases to use at the very beginning.
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What to say when opening a meeting
First things first — start a meeting in a polite and respectful manner. Don’t just jump in straight to the reason you scheduled it.
This might sound like common sense, but plenty of people actually forget to do it.
So, let’s go over all the phrases that can come in handy in the first couple of minutes of your call — from welcoming and introducing the participants to sharing the agenda and goals of your meeting.
Phrases for welcoming and introducing meeting participants
Making the participants feel welcome doesn’t go without saying. This is especially true if you are meeting everyone for the first time.
Regardless of the purpose of your conference, here are some business meeting phrases you should have in mind in the beginning.
Phrases for welcoming the participants:
“Thank you all for coming.”
“I appreciate everyone being here.”
“First, I’d like to welcome you all.”
“I would like to thank you for being here on time.”
“I wish to thank you all for coming on such short notice.”
Sometimes, the attendees may not have come across each other before the meeting. They may have just joined the company and have now logged in to their virtual onboarding session.
Or maybe they finished their employee onboarding but haven’t had the chance to meet everyone yet.
Let’s see how you can break the ice before turning to the topic of the meeting.
Phrases for introducing the participants:
“Could everyone briefly introduce themselves?”
“I would like to introduce…”
“I would like to begin by introducing…”
“It’s my pleasure to introduce…”
“Let’s take a moment and introduce ourselves.”
“Please join me in welcoming…”
💡 Pumble Pro Tip
Starting the meeting in the right way is vital for success. If you’re worried about potential awkwardness, you can try opening with a few ice-breakers. Here are our top 200:
Phrases for sharing the objectives of a meeting
After a warm welcome, your team will probably want to know why they are there.
Even if you have scheduled the call weeks before or it’s a regular weekly updates meeting, it’s still necessary to state your motives.
Let’s take a look at some useful phrases for business meetings that you can use to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Phrases for presenting the meeting goals:
“Our aim today is to…”
“We are here today to decide on/agree on, etc.”
“By the end of today’s meeting, we need to…”
“I’ve scheduled this meeting so that we…”
“The purpose of today’s meeting is…”
“Today, we are going to…”
Phrases for introducing the meeting agenda
Meetings are a necessary evil — according to Pumble’s Meeting Statistics, over 70% of employees think their job satisfaction would improve if they attended fewer meetings.
So, apart from scheduling them sparingly, always make sure to point out the topics and the dynamics of the encounter. In other words — present the meeting agenda.
Here’s a list of practical business meeting phrases to help you review all the agenda items without skipping anything.
Phrases for sharing the agenda of the meeting:
“First, we will be discussing…”
“After that, we will move on to…”
“Then, we’ll try to cover…”
“Shortly after, we’ll go over…”
“Next, we will consider…”
“If there’s enough time, we will also go through…”
“Finally, we will talk about…”
💡 Pumble Pro Tip
If you need help creating a meeting agenda, Pumble has got you covered. Check out our list of free and customizable meeting agendas that you can use:
What to say during a meeting
It takes more than just welcoming everyone and introducing the talking points to make a meeting effective. Some might say the first two steps are the easy ones.
After that comes the main course of the evening — the actual meeting that involves a lot of discussions, questions, and clarifications.
This might be difficult for those who aren’t confident about effective communication.
Alternatively, it can also seem daunting to members of multicultural teams who struggle with understanding business or formal English in meetings.
Let’s examine the phrases that can help you keep your cool during a meeting — keep an eye out for practical corporate English sentences you can use to overcome the language barrier.
Phrases for discussing updates
Sometimes, you schedule a meeting to update everyone on recent developments.
Other times, the meeting’s purpose is nothing but celebrating the success and progress of the team.
But even when the goal of your meeting goes beyond pointing out the company’s news, it’s still necessary to touch upon the current situation in your team or company. To do that, you should share updates and ask others to do the same.
Try doing it with one of the following phrases.
Phrases for sharing or asking for updates in a meeting:
“Before we jump to our main point, I have something to share.”
“I would like to inform everyone about the project’s progress.”
“How is (name of the project) coming along?”
“Has everyone submitted their monthly reports?”
“Josh, can you let us know what’s new in…?”
“Regarding last month’s reports, I would like to add…”
“I suggest we start with Mike updating us on…”
💡 Pumble Pro Tip
Asking people for updates isn’t necessarily a meeting-only activity. But, we know asking for an update in a one-on-one conversation can sometimes be awkward. That’s why we prepared the following guide:
Phrases for moving forward
Perhaps you’ve touched on a topic that takes forever and a day to unfold, and there’s not enough time to discuss it in detail. Sometimes, your team members might need a hint that it’s time to move on and let the previous topic be.
Whenever you want to suggest moving forward, you can use one or more of these business meeting phrases.
Phrases for moving to another topic:
“If nobody has anything else to share, let’s move on to…”
“I think that covers it. Now we can go to our next topic…”
“Let’s move on to our next point.”
“Since we’ve covered this issue, now we can go to the next one.”
“The next topic we need to cover is…”
“Now that we’ve found a solution/finished discussing this topic, we can go to…”
Phrases for keeping a discussion on track
Meetings may start with small talk. This isn’t a bad thing — small talk can help ease everyone into the meeting and make everyone feel more comfortable.
However, sometimes it can get out of hand and spill into the meeting in the middle of a critical discussion. Very quickly, this can turn into mayhem — people talking over each other, adding quips and comments, and generally disengaging from the actual topic of the meeting.
To prevent this and keep your meeting in order, try using some of the following phrases.
Phrases for keeping the discussion on track:
“Can we continue this discussion later and go back to…?”
“We are getting off topic. Can we return to…?”
“Can we please go back to our subject?”
“I’m afraid we are running out of time, so could we go back to…?”
“Getting back to the topic…”
“Let’s skip this topic and take it up at another time.”
“We can continue talking about this later. Now, let’s go back to our previous subject.”
If your team is still eager to talk, you can refer them to continue the conversation in the #random channel of your team communication app — like Pumble.
💡 Pumble Pro Tip
If you need some extra help when it comes to engaging people who attend your meetings, check out this article:
Phrases for handing the word over to another person
Meetings are rarely a one-person show. Even when you are in charge of hosting, sometimes you’ll have to hand the mic over to other team members.
Knowing how to properly do that is a vital part of meeting etiquette. To help you navigate the transition, we gathered the following useful business meeting phrases.
Phrases for asking someone to speak in a meeting:
“Now, Carl will tell us more about…”
“I would like to hand it over to Mike, who can share more on this topic.”
“Kim is now going to take over.”
“I’d like to hand you over to Joshua, who will talk you through…”
“Now I would like to introduce Sim, who will talk about…”
What to say when finishing up a meeting
Finally, the meeting is coming to a close, and you can wrap it up.
However, before you hastily reach for the End the call button or leap to your feet, eager to leave the conference room, there are still a couple of things to be done.
Let’s go over everything you need to cover before you bid the participants farewell, such as summarize the main points and thank everyone for their time.
Phrases for summarizing
Although pretty potent, the human ability to memorize all the details doesn’t depend on our willingness only. That’s why we write meeting minutes — so we don’t have to rely on our memory alone.
To help your meeting attendees remember what’s been said during the meeting, you’ll need to sum everything up — especially if you’ve spent some time discussing critical topics.
Here are some phrases to help you ensure everyone bears the crucial information in mind.
Phrases for summarizing in a meeting:
“Here are some of the main points we discussed today.”
“To sum up, we’ve talked about…”
“I would like to briefly cover the topics we mentioned today.”
“Before we finish, let’s go over everything we talked about today.”
“Let’s quickly summarize the main points of today’s meeting.”
Free business messaging tool
Boost your meeting experience — try Pumble, for enhanced team communication.
Phrases for closing a meeting
After reviewing the main points of your meeting, all that’s left is to close the meeting.
If you’re out of ideas on what to say, here are some suggestions.
Phrases for ending a meeting:
“To conclude, we have decided on…”
“That covers everything for today.”
“We have covered everything from our agenda.”
“We will have to finish here, but our next meeting will be scheduled for…”
“If there’s nothing more to discuss, we can end here.”
Phrases for thanking everyone for attending
Ending the meeting without showing appreciation for your team members’ attendance is both impolite and disrespectful of their time.
To avoid coming across as unappreciative, let’s go over some phrases you can use to wrap up a meeting on a positive note.
Phrases for showing appreciation in a meeting:
“I would like to thank everyone for coming today.”
“Thank you all for your time.”
“Thank you for your participation in today’s meeting.”
“I want to thank everybody for a productive meeting.”
“Thank you all for sharing your time today.”
And, if you forget this step, don’t worry — you can always thank everyone in a group message on your business messaging app, as shown in the example below.
What to say if you are attending a meeting
If you’re not facilitating the meeting, you might think all you have to do is show up and look interested.
Although being an attendee isn’t as demanding as being the host, you might still need to do more than just nod along to what’s being said.
Chances are, you are invited to attend a meeting for a reason. Most of the time, you will need to voice your opinion or help your team members reach a decision.
However, you don’t have to overextend yourself in preparation for attending a meeting. Just make sure to go through all the meeting expressions and phrases we’ve put together and keep them on hand during the meeting.
Phrases for sharing your perspective in a meeting
In a meeting with many participants, it’s natural to not want to add to the noise and overload everyone even further. Information overload is quite widespread and can pose a threat to the entire organization’s performance.
However, not speaking up in meetings can be hurtful both for the transparency of your team’s communication and your own career growth.
To prevent the fear of speaking out from getting in the way of your progress, we’ve gathered all the necessary business meeting phrases you could use to express your thoughts and opinions.
Phrases for sharing your opinion
Whether you are the only expert on the discussed topic or you’d just like to share your ideas before a decision is made, it’s only proper to carefully pick what you’ll say before speaking your mind.
Wait for the right moment, and then use one of the following phrases to get everyone’s attention and share your opinion.
Phrases for sharing your opinion in a meeting:
“I think we should try…”
“From my point of view, that’s…”
“I think that this is a great idea.”
“There is no doubt this project will come through.”
“I am positive that this is the right path to take.”
“The way I see things…”
💡 Pumble Pro Tip
If you’re quiet in meetings because you fear that interrupting others might paint you in a bad light, we have news for you. There is a way to do it politely and professionally — check it out:
Phrases for agreeing
Whenever a suggestion comes up in the #general channel of your instant messaging app, showing your agreement doesn’t take a lot of time. If you use an emoji reaction such as (🙌), (🤝), or (✅), your teammates will quickly conclude that you approve of their idea.
In a business meeting, however, agreeing with a suggestion requires you to put your opinions into words. Here are some expressions you can use whenever you wish to support your team.
Phrases for agreeing in a meeting:
“I completely agree with that.”
“I support your view.”
“I am with you on this!”
“That is how I see it, too.”
“Great point!”
“I have to agree with Mike.”
Phrases for disagreeing
Expressing different opinions in a business meeting does not have to turn into a conflict. However, many people fear it will, so they avoid disagreeing with coworkers.
Although that helps them not to rock the boat, it can also lead to misunderstandings and bad decisions.
So, to help your team thrive, you have to speak up — even when you disagree with them. Here are some meeting phrases that will help you.
Phrases for disagreeing in a meeting:
“That’s a great point, but maybe we should consider all the options.”
“Great job for noticing that, but have you considered X?”
“I see where your idea is coming from, but maybe we should change the direction a little bit.”
“I see where you’re coming from, but…”
“I’m sorry, but I have to disagree on this because…”
“While I agree with you on X, have you considered Y?”
“Good idea, but I think the following would make more sense…”
💡 Pumble Pro Tip
Disagreements at work can lead to conflict if not properly managed. If that does happen, here are some tips on how to defuse the situation:
Phrases for advising and suggesting
No matter how confident you are making a suggestion — it can sometimes be a nail-biting situation.
It can be tough to properly phrase the very beginning of your suggestion — which is unfortunate because that’s the part that gets everyone’s attention.
To ensure all eyes (and ears) are on you, try phrasing your suggestion in one of the following ways.
Phrases for suggesting solutions in a meeting:
“I think we should try…”
“Why don’t we…?”
“Perhaps we could…?”
“What do you think of…?”
“We should…”
“How about we…?”
“Couldn’t we try to…?”
“I suggest that…”
Phrases for clarifying
Making suggestions isn’t as simple as just stating an idea and calling it a day. More likely than not, other people will have follow-up questions or simply won’t understand your point.
So, you’ll most likely have to elaborate more on your main idea.
Here’s how you can do that to ensure everyone gets a clear picture.
Phrases for giving clarification in a meeting:
“Let me put this another way.”
“Here’s what I had in mind.”
“What I’m saying is that…”
“My idea was…”
“Just to clarify…”
“In a nutshell, what I’m saying is…”
Free business messaging tool
Boost your meeting experience — try Pumble, for enhanced team communication.
What to say if you’re asking questions in a meeting
Not everyone is a natural-born speaker. So, when presenting ideas, sharing opinions, or simply offering input in a meeting, people’s thoughts might come out as a bit confusing and incoherent.
This is when a nudge in the right direction comes in handy.
To help your coworkers who are struggling — and help yourself understand the situation better — you should strive to ask the right questions.
Apart from showing interest in their ideas, when you ask for more details on a topic, you demonstrate a willingness to learn, grow, and collaborate with your team members.
Let’s see how you can do that.
Phrases for asking for repetition
Sometimes, we mishear something that’s been said in a meeting. Other times, our minds wander off, and we find ourselves unaware of what’s being discussed.
In those situations, don’t try to fake it until you make it. Instead, just ask the person to repeat themselves.
It might seem awkward, but using one of the following phrases will ensure you sound professional and polite — and not like you weren’t paying attention.
Phrases for asking for repetition in a meeting:
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that, please?”
“Can you run that by me one more time, please?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t quite understand that. Could you say it one more time, please?”
“I missed that. Could you say it again, please?”
“Can you repeat what you just said?”
“I’m sorry, would you mind repeating that?”
Phrases for asking for clarification
Sometimes, even when people repeat themselves, you still won’t be on the same page. Your first instinct here might be to keep quiet out of fear of prolonging the meeting by asking more questions.
Don’t be!
You can’t be too careful when an important decision is at stake, so a bit of clarification won’t do any harm.
Let’s go over some useful phrases to help you understand the direction of any discussion in a meeting.
Phrases for asking for clarification in a meeting:
“Sorry, I’m not sure what you were aiming at. Could you explain it a bit?”
“Could you go into a little more detail?”
“Could you please tell me what you mean by…?”
“Let me check if I understood you correctly. Did you say that…?”
“Could you be a little bit more precise, please?”
“Can you expand on that?”
“I’m curious to hear more about this. Could you elaborate?”
Phrases for asking for opinions
In a meeting — especially a large one — people might not be willing to chime in with their opinion. However, sometimes you simply have to call them out to check whether everyone agrees with a decision or a plan.
To ensure you do it politely and to avoid making it seem like you’re putting someone on the spot, try using one of these phrases.
Phrases for asking for opinion in a meeting:
“Mike, would you mind giving us your opinion on this?”
“How do you feel about this, Susie?”
“What is your opinion on this subject?”
“What are your views on…?”
“Esther, can we get your input?”
“Maggie, can we hear what you have to say about this?”
“Does everyone agree with this? How about you, Dave?”
If you want everyone’s opinion on a specific topic, you could also poll the meeting participants. This can happen during or after the meeting — you can use the poll feature in your group messaging app to see if everyone agrees.
Take charge of your meetings with Pumble
When an unexpected meeting comes out of the blue in the middle of the workweek, it’s quite tempting to search for ways to get out of talking.
Instead of letting your fear rule you like that, reach for our list of useful business meeting phrases and take the reins into your hands.
Doing that will be much easier with Pumble, a team communication and collaboration app.
Pumble makes meetings simple with features like:
- Voice calls — ideal both for 1-on-1 conferences and group meetings,
- Video conferencing — for all your virtual meetings,
- Screen sharing — which will ensure your presentations go off without a hitch,
- Hand raising — which will keep your meetings orderly and give everyone a chance to speak their mind,
- In-call messages — for when you want to voice your opinion but don’t want to interrupt the flow of the meeting, and
- Background blur effect — which will help keep the focus entirely on you.
With Pumble (and a bit of practice and preparation), you’ll be able to dominate your business meetings in no time!
Boost your meeting game — make a free Pumble account today!
