How To Manage Meetings

What makes for a great meeting? As a leader, how can you keep discussions on point and productive? In How to Run a Meeting, Antony Jay argues that too many leaders fail to plan adequately for meetings. In this bestselling article, he defines the characteristics that contribute to success, from keeping formal minutes to acknowledging junior staff first. These guidelines will help you get demonstrably better results from every meeting you run. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.

Meetings are important business and social activities. However, research suggests that meetings engulf as much as 60 per cent of the time we spend at work. Despite their necessity and the costs involved, many meetings are organized by individuals who have other full-time responsibilities and lack the formal training and experience to ensure their successful planning and execution. How to Manage Meetings provides much-needed guidance on how to get meetings right. Readers should be able to reap the rewards from appropriate preparation, maximizing participation, understanding group dynamics, effective chairing, and how to follow up effectively after a meeting has taken place. This fully revised second edition includes new content on electronic and virtual meetings, a new chapter on improving a group's thinking and additional guidance on how best to prepare for a meeting from the perspective of three key roles: Chair, Administrator and Participant.

Learn all you need to know about meetings from planning and preparing an agenda to establishing formal procedures and dealing with potentially volatile situations. Managing Meetings shows how to chair and participate fully in a meeting plus it also provides practical techniques for you to use to make meetings work for you. Power tips help you handle real-life situations and develop first-class meeting skills that will dramatically improve efficiency and decisiveness. This innovative series covers a wide range of management and personal development topics. Each title is a comprehensive yet compact source of easy reference for all those in or aspiring to a position of responsibility with a focus on developing and enhancing professional management practice.

Provides tips for holding successful meetings, including inviting the right people, running short meetings, preventing someone from taking over a meeting, and developing an agenda.

Meetings are important business and social activities. We meet with other people to learn, to exchange information, to take decisions and to enjoy ourselves. However, research has suggested that meetings are not only a waste of time but also engulf 60 per cent of our working time. Despite their necessity, many meetings are organized by individuals who have other full-time responsibilities and lack the formal training and experience to ensure their successful planning and execution. Alan Barker provides guidance on how to get meetings right. Readers should be able to reap the rewards from appropriate preparation, maximizing participation, understanding group dynamics, effective chairing, and how to follow up.

Run more productive meetings. Whether you're new to running meetings or a seasoned executive with no time to waste, leading effective (and even pleasant!) meetings is a must. Running Meetings guides you through the basics of: Crafting a useful agenda Inviting the right team members Making sure everyone's voice is heard while avoiding conflict Capturing decisions, ideas, and follow-up tasks Don't have much time? Get up to speed fast on the most essential business skills with HBR's 20-Minute Manager series. Whether you need a crash course or a brief refresher, each book in the series is a concise, practical primer that will help you brush up on a key management topic. Advice you can quickly read and apply, for ambitious professionals and aspiring executives—from the most trusted source in business.

Preface -- Setting the meeting stage -- So many meetings and so much frustration -- Get rid of meetings? no, solve meetings through science -- Evidence-based strategies for leaders -- The image in the mirror is likely wrong -- Meet for 48 minutes -- Agendas are a hollow crutch -- The bigger, the badder -- Don't get too comfortable in that chair -- Deflate negative energy from the start -- No more talking! -- The folly of the remote call-in meeting -- Putting it all together -- Epilogue: trying to get ahead of the science' using science -- Tool: meeting quality self-assessment -- Tool: sample engagement survey and 360 feedback questions on meetings -- Tool: good meeting facilitation checklist -- Tool: huddle implementation checklist -- Tool: agenda template -- Tool: guide to taking good meeting minutes/notes -- Tool: expectations assessment -- Acknowledgments -- References -- Index

A tremendous amount of time is lost in business every day because of ineffective meetings. This dynamic book demonstrates how to have fewer meetings and get better results. It explains how meeting management practices and attitudes have changed, and the most appropriate and effective meeting formats to obtain timely, high-quality, group decisions.