Top tips for chairing meetings

[Lincoln24]

I'm fairly new in a much more senior role than I've done before and am suddenly regularly called upon to chair meetings, sometimes at little or no notice.

It's not really a skill I've had to acquire before and I find it a bit of a struggle. I understand the basic principle of working through the agenda but I'm sometimes at a bit of a loss for what to say and when to move on. I often feel my meetings have fallen a bit flat and not really progressed anything or not as much as they should.

Any tips would be really welcome.

Thanks everyone, this has been extremely helpful. I realised I've been approaching meetings wrongly, in my mind they were a sort of discussion forum where everyone should be encouraged to voice their views. Probably comes from attending too many badly run meetings myself!
Now I see they should be much more purposeful and it's not necessary for everyone to speak and to fill the time.