Preparing for Your Meeting

Your meeting is far more likely to be a success if you think through its purpose, how to craft an effective agenda, whom to invite, how to word the invitation so that people actually attend, how to ensure your attendees are well prepared, and how you’ll lead and delegate within the meeting when it happens.

Not every gathering will require elaborate preparation, of course. In some cases your initial prep work may in fact lead you to conclude that you don’t need a meeting after all. But remember to think of running a meeting as a discipline: If you take the time to run through the basics of good preparation each time, you’ll know what to expect on the actual day and develop a natural sense for how much groundwork is appropriate ...

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