This guidance tells you how to prepare for meetings where politics are going to play a role (which is to say, ALL of them). ;-)

Most folks don’t do any preparation for the meetings they go to, unless they’re presenting something. This is a mistake, particularly when we’re meeting with folks who are more senior, or who are outside of our team. In either case, you’ll be far more effective if you know who wants what and who likes whom.

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This guidance recommends how to address behaviors in meetings that reduce meeting effectiveness, based on a popular 2012 Wall Street Journal article. This Chapter deals with handling a Rambler – someone who talks and talks and talks ... and talks.

A recent WSJ article headlined “Meet The Meeting Killers” talked about how different behaviors in meetings can ruin the meeting. It’s in the 15 May 2012 edition, and is available to non-subscribers, at least for a time.

This is our answer to those behaviors. And, we’ll address both running meetings of your team, and cross-functional meetings, where you have less direct authority.

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This guidance recommends how to address behaviors in meetings that reduce meeting effectiveness, based on a popular 2012 Wall Street Journal article. This Chapter deals with handling a Silent Plotter – someone who tries to kill every idea, even after everyone’s agreed.

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This guidance recommends how to address behaviors in meetings that reduce meeting effectiveness, based on a popular 2012 Wall Street Journal article. This Chapter deals with handling a Naysayer – someone who tries to kill every idea, even after everyone’s agreed.

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This guidance tells you how to avoid the mistake of “Agenda Fascism” in One on Ones

We made up the term “Agenda Fascism”. It means demanding someone follow an agenda even when doing so defeats the purpose of the agenda. Many managers mistakenly practice agenda fascism in their One on Ones. Here’s how it happens, and how to avoid it.

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This guidance recommends how to address behaviors in meetings that reduce meeting effectiveness.

A recent WSJ article headlined “Meet The Meeting Killers” talked about how different behaviors in meetings can ruin the meeting. It’s in the 15 May 2012 edition, and is available to non-subscribers, at least for a time.

This is our answer to those behaviors. And, we’ll address both running meetings of your team, and cross-functional meetings, where you have less direct authority.

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This guidance tells you how to structure meeting agendas around the biggest, most important items.

What should come first on your meeting agendas? How do you divide time among four or five items that you want to discuss or decide or action?

It’s not hard – put the most important item FIRST, and give it plenty of time.

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This guidance recommends a standing ground rule at all meetings: No “buts,” only “and”.

The most frequent behavior we all engage in at work is communication. And, for most of us, we don’t think about it much. We were never really “taught” how to communicate, though we did “learn” it.

This creates problems for us at work, though. We “learned” when we weren’t in a professional environment. And the professional environment requires us to work in close proximity to others. We bring our “learned” behaviors. They bring theirs. Thus, conflict. It’s time to start learning new behaviors.

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This guidance describes how to use a “Fruit Bowl” to eliminate cell phone distractions at meetings.

If there is a dichotomy about business behaviors based on age – and we don’t believe there is - the one place Mark would expect folks to cite as proof of it is the use of digital devices. We don’t think this means anything about the different age groups. If you are still forming your habits when you get a cell phone and a laptop, there’s a greater likelihood that you’ll incorporate those devices into your habitual daily life more readily and frequently than someone who had already established their habits when those devices became…ubiquitous.

And when Facebook comes to your phone… well, it gets worse. ;-)

But constant device usage doesn’t necessarily follow inexorably from ubiquity. And in meetings, devices are counter-productive.

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This guidance describes how to schedule hour-long meetings, which are often back-to-back-to-back, in only 45 minutes.

How many days at the office are you in back to back-to-back meetings? At least one day a week, and for some of us, 2 or even 3 or 4. You hate it. It’s often unproductive. Frankly, it’s ALWAYS unproductive.

Why are we doing this to ourselves? There’s a better way.

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