Business Communication

A meeting is where a group of people come together to discuss issues, to improve communication, to promote coordination or to deal with any matters that are put on the agenda and to help get any jobs done. For any meeting to be successful it needs the support of the group involved, or the organization behind it and it must have the intention of achieving some goal or objective.

Meetings are held for any of the following reasons:

·         To sort out any conflicts.

·         To negotiate a contract or agreement, or matters to do with it.

·         To deal with a current problem within the group or within the business or organisation.

·         To receive a report for assessment and review.

·         To supply information to those present or to canvas views of those present on the particular matter at hand.

1.      Meeting Purposes

1. Analysis, highly complex situations may require multiple subject matter experts. Frequently experts have their own vernacular or vocabulary, and a meeting is appropriate to homogenize understanding and agreement. Have you ever run a meeting with PhD engineers and creative marketing folks together? Sometimes it sounds like they are from different planets.

2. Assignments, structured meetings or workshops provide an excellent means of building agreement around roles and responsibilities. When using the FAST technique, you can leave the meeting with a consensually built GANTT chart, estimation of resource requirements, and approximation of budget needs.

3. Decision-Making, since resources typically fall short of the demands, prioritization is critical for high group performance. No team has the time or resource to do everything. Consensual understanding around prioritization provides one of the best justifications for hosting a meeting or workshop.

4. Idea Generation, the reason that groups are smarter than the smartest person in the group is because groups create more options than simply aggregating the input of participants. Many of the best ideas did not walk into the meeting; rather they were created during the meeting, based on stimulation from others.

5. Information Exchange, by far and away the most common reason for meetings is also one of the worst possible reasons for justifying a meeting. With instant access and electronic filing cabinets, coming together face-to-face is a very expensive way to exchange information. A better justification would be to address questions about clarity, agreement, and omissions of related information or the impact the information ought have on the behavior of participants.

6. Inspiration and Fun, meetings can be effectively used to both reward, incent, and incite but usually on a large-scale that involve complimentary events or sessions that also involve learning and building teamwork.

7. Persuasion, probably the worst reason for holding a meeting is to convince other people to change their behavior. There are three primary forms of persuasion; namely identification (eg, advertising), internalization (ie, long-lasting), and forced-compliance (ie, “gun to the head”). Meetings are sub-optimal for all three forms of persuasion, and therefore are rarely successful at persuasion.

8. Relationships, simply pulling together people face-to-face provides the glue that can pull people together and get them to work more cooperatively. Frequently venting, or managing conflict, can result in increased effectiveness. Probably the best time to invest in face-to-face meetings is when people don’t agree with each other and need to both reconcile their points of view and agree to move on.

2.      Types of Meeting 

a. Status Update Meetings, it is one of the most common meeting types. This category includes regular team and project meetings, where the primary goal is to align the team via updates on progress, challenges, and next steps. Commonly found group activities in these kinds of meetings are problem solving, decision making, prioritization, and task assignment.

b. Information Sharing Meetings, The primary goal of these meeting is for the speakers to share information with the attendees. This could be information about things like upcoming changes, new products and techniques, or in depth knowledge of a domain. Visual communication tools, like slides and videos, are powerful tools for making the shared information more memorable. Presentations, panel debates, keynotes, and lectures are all examples of information sharing meetings.

c. Decision Making Meetings, the vast majority of business decisions are made by groups in meetings. While small decisions are made in all kinds of meetings, the more important decisions often get their own dedicated meetings. There are different types of group decision making processes, and care should be taken to choose a process that best matches the situation. A decision making process can include group processes like information gathering and sharing, brainstorming solutions, evaluating options, ranking preferences, and voting.

d. Problem Solving Meetings, are perhaps the most complex and varied type of meetings. Whether the meeting is addressing an identified problem, or it is focusing on creating strategies and plans to navigate the future, there are a rich arsenal of group processes that can be used. Scopes and priorities need to be defined, opportunities and threats need to be identified, and possible solutions should be brainstormed, evaluated, and agreed upon.

e. Innovation Meetings, innovation meetings and creative meetings often start with thinking outside the box, by brainstorming, associating, and sharing ideas in a broad scope. Meeting participants can then use various techniques and processes to reduce the diverse pool of ideas to a more focused short list. Through ranking, evaluations, and decision making the most suitable idea, or ideas, are identified, and recommendations and tasks can be assigned based on this.

g. Team Building Meetings, all meetings should contribute to team building, strengthening relationships and corporate culture. However, now and then team building activities should be the main focus for a meeting. This category include meetings like include all-hands meetings, kick-off meetings, team building outings, and corporate events. Have participants feel like essential parts of their unit, team, department, branch, and company has all kinds of positive impact on their engagement, performance, and satisfaction.

3.      Good Meeting

a.   Begin with the end in mind (Covey): Before you schedule a meeting, it’s useful to share what you hope to achieve with those who will be attending the meeting. There are three basic reasons for meetings: decision-making, information-sharing, and “idea-floating.” Information-sharing and idea-floating meetings can often be streamlined with an advance email that contains background information. Circulation of a “pros and cons” memo, shared in advance of an idea-floating meeting, can help focus the discussion and spark ideas to overcome barriers to implementing a good idea. If the goal of your meeting is a decision, be sure that those with the power to move an idea forward are present and well-briefed so the question presented at the meeting is “ripe” for a decision. Think hard whether a face-to-face meeting is necessary. There is no question that in-person meetings are most effective for reaching consensus. Meeting in person also offers the ability to draw out feedback in greater detail and with more nuance than is possible through email or webinars. But if the purpose of the meeting is mainly to exchange ideas, (i.e., information sharing and idea floating) consider alternatives to sit-down meetings. 

b.    Make your objective clear. A meeting must have a specific and defined purpose. Before you send that calendar invite, ask yourself: What do I seek to accomplish? Are you alerting people to a change in management or a shift in strategy? Are you seeking input from others on a problem facing the company? Are you looking to arrive at a decision on a particular matter? Standing meetings with vague purposes, such as “status updates,” are rarely a good use of time.

c.    Consider who is invited. When you’re calling a meeting, take time to think about who really needs to be there. If you’re announcing a change, invite the people who are affected by the announcement. If you’re trying to solve a problem, invite the people who will be good sources of information for a solution. When people feel that what’s being discussed isn’t relevant to them, or that they lack the skills or expertise to be of assistance, they'll view their attendance at the meeting as a waste of time.

d.   Stick to your schedule. Create an agenda that lays out everything you plan to cover in the meeting, along with a timeline that allots a certain number of minutes to each item, and email it to people in advance. Once you’re in the meeting, put that agenda up on a screen or whiteboard for others to see. This keeps people focused.

e.    Start on time, end on time. If you have responsibility for running regular meetings and you have a reputation for being someone who starts and ends promptly, you will be amazed how many of your colleagues will make every effort to attend your meetings. People appreciate it when you understand that their time is valuable. Another note on time: Do not schedule any meeting to last longer than an hour. Sixty minutes is generally the longest time workers can remain truly engaged.

f.     Ban technology. The reality is that if people are allowed to bring iPads or BlackBerries into the room, they won't be focusing on the meeting or contributing to it. Instead, they’ll be emailing, surfing the web, or just playing around with their technology. Eyes up here, please

4.      Characteristic Of A Successful Meeting

Want to bring back the magic to your organization’s meetings? Here are ten fundamental concepts that characterize an effective meeting.

a.    Start with the definition.  A meeting is a business activity where select people gather to perform work that requires a team effort.

b.    A meeting, like any business event, succeeds when it is preceded by planning, characterized by focus, governed by structure, and controlled by a budget.

c.    Short meetings free people to work on the essential activities that represent the core of their jobs. In contrast, long meetings prevent people from working on critical tasks such as planning, communicating, and learning.

d.   Three things guarantee an unproductive meeting: poor planning, lack of appropriate process, and hostile culture. Effective leaders attend to all of these to create an effective meeting.

e.    Effective meetings require sharing control and making commitments.

f.     The ultimate goals of every meeting are agreements, decisions, or solutions. Meetings held for other reasons seldom produce anything of value.

g.    Unprepared participants will spend their time in the meeting preparing for the meeting.

h.    It is better to spend a little time preparing for solutions than to spend a lot of time fixing problems.

i.      Meetings are an investment of resources and time that should earn a profit.

j.      A meeting can be led from any chair in the room. And if it’s your meeting, you want it to be your chair.

And these four are powerful ground rules to help ensure successful meetings are:

a.    Be prepared for discussion

b.    Everyone participates

c.    Stick to the agenda

d.   Reach closure or consensus whenever possible

Sources

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2014/02/05/seven-steps-to-running-the-most-effective-meeting-possible/amp/

www.startrungrow.com/information/business/1,2383,purpose-of-meetings.htm

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mgrush.com/blog/2013/02/14/meeting-purposes/amp/

http://dianagabriel.com/10-characteristics-of-effective-meetings/

http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/characteristics_of_successful_meetings

http://meetingsift.com/the-six-types-of-meetings/