Category: communication

Successfully Managing Your Business Meetings

One of the things I truly appreciate about webinars is that they usually start on time, rarely run into overtime, or fall into the meeting that births another meeting category.

Nothing is more exasperating than a meeting that goes into overtime. So how do you keep a meeting within the allotted time frame without squashing creativity and discouraging interactions by meeting members?

Keeping your meeting on topic and within the allotted time takes discipline and effort, but not everyone takes the time to get it right. Plus, with so many ad hoc meetings, few people have the time to think through their meetings in advance and have a structured plan.

Here are a few helpful meeting tips:
1.      Along with invites, make the purpose of the meeting clear by sending out the agenda points to attendees in advance. It also helps to include the items that will not be discussed at the meeting.

2.      Pay attention to the number of possible attendees. Invite too many people, and vital topics may end up short of air time. Invite too few people; you may need a wider variety of opinions.

3.      Pay special attention to people who are prone to long-windedness. It is a good idea to inform attendees that they should keep their comments short and to the point so that others can get equal time.

4.      Setting the right tone regarding contributing input at the meeting will help attendees see you as the steward setting the direction of the meeting and the leader who encourages attendees to share their ideas.

5.      It helps to acknowledge when topics go off on tangents. Acknowledge the speaker but let it be known that an in-depth discussion of the info the person presented cannot be accommodated at the current meeting. Addressing the elephant in the room head-on can help appease the dissenter and get your meeting back on topic.

6.      Be careful as you transition from topic to topic, and above all, work towards ending the meeting well, which sets the stage for continued conversation on the topic discussed and for the work to continue.

After the meeting, document the conclusions, email attendees the follow-up steps, and who is responsible so no one can say they are unsure what findings were identified at the meeting. 

The Logic Bully

I heard from a former colleague recently who wanted to refer a friend. She said her friend was frustrated since he had attended twelve first interviews. But his interviews were not going well since quite a few ended early and abruptly. He felt no one allowed him to sell himself and sell his ideas. You don’t say!

On my exploratory call with the potential client, he explained his ongoing interviewing struggles and apparent failure to connect with interviewers and asked how I could help. After I explained our program. He volunteered that he had an excellent interview process and pronounced, “Here is how I would like you to approach my interview preparation training.”

He then told me how he would like his interview preparation sessions arranged and what topics should be covered. I listened to the entire schooling on how to coach job seekers of his level of experience. Then he ended with, “when are you available to help me practice?”

I reasoned that I should try to escape gracefully, as he was a referral. So I ventured that I did not think we would work well together since our approaches to coaching and communication styles differed quite a bit. Plus, since he was already using his process without success, I would hesitate to utilize his process and add more casualties.

Starting again, at some speed, he explained that he was a strong communicator with excellent people skills, areas of expertise, and achievements, etc. All the while sounding like the out-of-tune brass section of a marching band for whom noise is the thing.

We ended the call with the potential client offering me time to consider his proposal to coach him using HIS methods and a second meeting.

Sadly, in his effort to sell himself and his interviewing strategy, the client morphed into a “logic bully.” And in his self-centric drive to sell himself, he became a noisy communicator who deluges others with his processes, best practices, expertise, and riotous failure to stay on topic.

The colleague who referred him called a few days later, “Do you have any advice?” she asked. Then I remembered one of my mother’s pearls and offered: “Tell him to use the door handle. He doesn’t need to kick down every door.”  

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