Successful Meetings in a Week: Teach Yourself

David Cotton

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781444159196
• eBook ISBN: 9781444159219
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations
• Index: Business

The ability to hold successful meetings is crucial to anyone who wants to advance their career.Written by David Cotton, a leading expert on meetings as both a coach and practitioner, this book quickly teaches you the insider secrets you need to know to in order to run successful meetings.The highly motivational 'in a week' structure of the book provides seven straightforward chapters explaining the key points, and at the end there are optional questions to ensure you have taken it all in. There are also cartoons and diagrams throughout, to help make this book a more enjoyable and effective learning experience.So what are you waiting for? Let this book put you on the fast track to success!

Today we’ll bring together everything you have learned this week in the form of a short story.

We’ll meet two fairly junior members of an organization who have been asked to set up and run an important in-house meeting. Although they have attended many meetings, they have no experience of running one themselves. We’ll see through their mistakes and the solutions they find how to set up, run and follow up after the perfect meeting. Along the way, they note what they would do differently next time. You may find their notes helpful in planning and running your own perfect meetings.

Meet the characters

Bob and Pat are junior managers in a large service industry. Each had an internship with the company the summer before their final year at university, and they started together at the company three years ago on a graduate induction programme. They are bright, ambitious and always seeking development opportunities. Bob is cautious and concerned about what others think about him. Pat throws caution to the wind and sometimes takes actions without considering the consequences. She is often frustrated by Bob’s conservatism. He is scared that she will do something which casts them both in a bad light. Despite this, they are close colleagues, often working together, and they socialize with the same group outside work.

An instruction from above

Their director, Alison, sees running a meeting as a relatively high-profile development opportunity for them. She has given them an outline of the purpose of the meeting, a list of participants to be invited and told them that, because she is tied up in a project over the next couple of weeks, they should do everything they can to arrange the meeting, one of them should chair it and they should talk to her only if they encounter any issues which they cannot resolve.

Determining the purpose

Bob and Pat study the outline for the meeting.

‘It’s a bit vague, isn’t it?’, says Bob. ‘It says it’s a meeting of the regional directors to plan staff training and development and associated budgets over the next two years.’

‘Seems clear enough to me’, says Pat. ‘What more do you need?’

Bob is unhappy at the lack of detail. He doesn’t know many directors, knows little about current staff training and development plans, and doesn’t know where to start with the agenda.

Pat scans the list of participants and sees that the HR Director, who is responsible for staff development, will be attending the meeting. She picks up the phone to call him. Bob stops her, saying that they should first decide what they need to know to get the best from the call. Between them they agree that they should find out about:

1 current training and development plans

2 significant planned and expected events in the organization which may have an effect on training and development

3 current training development budgets

4 attitudes of the directors towards training and development.

Pat makes the call. The HR Director, although pleasant, is busy. He offers to e-mail them the current plans and budget details but says that he is not in the best position to talk about planned and expected events. They should speak to someone else about this – he is vague about who could help them. He feels he would be speaking out of turn if he commented on other directors’ attitudes, and this is something best gauged during the meeting. Bob is concerned that he sounds offended at the question. Pat is unconcerned.

They debate whether or not to call Alison and decide not to bother her just yet. They think they have enough to start creating an agenda. Pat makes a mental note:

Always determine the purpose of a meeting and discover as much as you can about it before attending

Setting the agenda

Bob has checked back through the files and discovered that the regional directors usually use a standard agenda for their meetings. He talks to Alison’s secretary, who provides a copy and remarks that this agenda is for their quarterly meetings, but that this is an additional, exceptional meeting called before the budgets are finalized because it could result in a big spend. She is unsure whether the standard agenda will work.

The standard agenda says:

• Action points from last meeting
• Director’s report: Northern region
• Director’s report: Southern region
• Director’s report: Midlands region
• Review of action points
• Next steps and date of next meeting

‘Doesn’t tell us much’, says Pat. ‘Let’s write our own.’

Bob is worried that...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half Title
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Title
• Contents 
• Introduction
• Sunday Why Meetings?
• Monday Preparing for a Meeting
• Tuesday Participating in a Meeting
• Wednesday Chairing a Meeting
• Thursday Virtual and Other Types of Meeting
• Friday After the Meeting
• Saturday the Perfect Meeting
• Surviving in Tough Times
• Answers
• References
• Copyright