How to Run an Effective Meeting

It’s the fuel for movies like Office Space and Scott Adams’ Dilbertcomics: the inefficiency and bureaucracy of the corporate world. Boring, pointless meetings are just one of the symptoms of an entire ecosystem of poor organization and communication.

So why are meetings often so ineffective? You’d think that nobody involved would want to waste his or her valuable time. Many managers and business owners simply have unrealistic expectations for how meetings will operate. They think, “We’ll just have a free flowing, open, brainstorming type of meeting and lots of good ideas will come out,'” says Glenn Parker, a team building consultant and the author of Meeting Excellence: 33 Tools to Lead Meetings That Get Results.Parker says there’s a time and a place for that kind of meeting, for example if you’re gathering some creatives to pool ideas for an ad campaign, but a lack of structure is likely to yield a lack of results. The style of meetings you run can range from this freeform discussion mode to a one-way information dump, in which the leadership updates their staff on strategic developments.

For some companies meetings are a tumor of unproductiveness waiting to be excised, while for others they’re the lifeblood of the company’s communication in chaotic times. In either case, there are plenty of ways you can make sure your meetings are productive.
How to Run an Effective Meeting: Types of Meetings and How to Run Them (…)

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