Running Effective Meetings For Dummies

Chapter 2

Matching the Meeting Style with the Meeting Goal

IN THIS CHAPTER

Defining the factors that impact meeting style

Choosing the right communication style for the meeting objective

Fitting your meeting practices with the organization’s meeting culture

Have you ever been in a meeting where the agenda didn’t fit the length of the meeting? Maybe the meeting was scheduled to last 30 minutes, but you knew it would probably take 90 minutes to cover every topic listed. Or maybe the communication approach was unrealistic based on the time allotted. The meeting leader wanted to take a round robin approach, allowing everyone to comment, but there are ten people in the meeting. If everyone shared their five-minute thought, there’d be no time for discussion or decision making.

In both of these cases, the meeting style did not match the meeting goal.

Even those with the best intentions can fail in execution, as Joe experienced in a recent meeting. The meeting leader created a well-designed agenda with a clearly defined goal. He even assigned individuals to present each item. But when he walked into the room, he took one look at the agenda and said, “Okay, so which of these items should ...