Business Meetings

Reading Comprehension
Effective Meetings – Plan for Efficiency
Despite predictions that the impact of technology in the workplace would reduce the need for meetings, it seems that meetings have started to consume an increasing proportion of the working day. As a result, organizations need staff that posses total meetings skills, including the ability to limit and shape the increasing demand or meetings.
Meetings often represent the most powerful and dramatic events in the workplace. When a meeting works well, the added value can be enormous. Conversely, meetings that give rise to poorly considered decisions and inappropriate follow-up actions will leverage this failure throughout the organization.
Each type of meeting should be carefully planned to achieve its specific objective.
If the main objective of the meeting is to inform people, then the meeting will usually involve some form of presentation followed by a question and answer session. This type of meeting should focus on the person presenting the information and the opportunity for discussion will often be limited.
If the meeting is held to solve a problem or brainstorm new ideas then everyone should be encouraged to participate from the outset. This kind of meeting should be relatively unstructured, and free flowing discussion should be encouraged. This will be helped by selecting the most appropriate venue and seating arrangement.
When meetings are successful they achieve an interchange between the partici- pants in which they can achieve more than they could by working alone - or by communicating in some other way. However, when the outcome is evaluated objec- tively, many meetings are not successful and often leave the participants feeling that the meeting was a waste of time.