Top Dog: Impress and Influence Everyone You Meet

4 Pick up the lead Get – then prepare for – a great first meeting

Think of a recent meeting that had no clear agenda. Let me guess – one of three things happened:

• It became very one-sided, with the customer telling you how well they were doing and that everything was rosy.
• It became very one-sided, with you or your colleagues asking lots of questions and getting a poor response.
• It was a meandering, pointless mess that resulted in no actions.

I think the worst meeting I attended was many years ago. I was a junior team member meeting a Senior Executive of a global bank. We kept asking questions, culminating in the toe-curling ‘what keeps you ...