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Further
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ASSET PROTECTION - Can You Bank On Your Haven? - Nicholas Pullen and Henry Morgan
There are more offshore banking havens than you can shake a stick at. Nicholas Pullen tells you how to separate the wheat from the chaff, and make sure the haven you choose is really a safe-house for your money. There are definite and strong...
Personal Discipline and the Home-Based Business Owner - Elena Fawkner
Personal Discipline and the Home-Based Business Owner © 2002 Elena Fawkner Allow me to let you in on a little secret you're probably already wise to anyway. As often as not, the inspiration for article topics comes from struggles with my own...
Repair Your Credit...The Right Way! - Dan Farrell
Copyright 2005 MHG Consulting How to Repair a Bad Credit Rating…The Right Way! If you have a bad credit rating, then you might find that your ability to get financing, loans, and even some jobs is greatly diminished. Once you have a bad...
What to Do When People Want Everything for Free - Diane Hughes
It’s a sticky situation. A prospect, a site visitor, or just a casual acquaintance asks for your help or advice on something. You gladly give it, thinking it’s a one-time “favor.” But instead of providing a little free advice, you’ve opened the...
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Are Your Meetings MINM or JAM?
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Written By:
Eileen McDargh, CSP, CPAE
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When people come to your meetings, do they say "this is a meeting I never miss" ( MINM) or do they say "this is just another meeting." (JAM)
Unproductive meetings gobble up an estimated 20% of corporate payrolls, throwing away $420 billion a year. American business people engage in an estimated 11 million meetings every workday. The average American executive spends 17 hours a week in meetings and more than 6 hours preparing. At an average salary of $45,000, more than $18,000 per executive is spent in meetings. Before you call another meeting, ask yourself:
·what's the outcome I want from this meeting? The more people know what "deliverables" should come from the meeting, the more focus you can bring to the conversations.
·is there a more effective way of getting the results without a meeting?
·who REALLY needs to be involved?
·when is the optimum time to have it and what time limit shall I set?
Sounds silly, but agendas make a huge difference. And forget 'old business". Who ever got excited about starting a meeting with "old business"! If it has relevancy to current situations, it is not "old"-it is pressing business.
The skills of running an effective meeting can easily be learned. These skills involve gatekeeping (i.e. making sure that one person does not monopolize the meeting), summarizing the points, calling for a decisions, establishing protocols, and keeping discussion on track.
However, there are times when one needs someone else to conduct a meeting. The more - continued below ...
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emotion that is connected to a meeting, the more complex the issues, the more it behooves you to consider using a facilitator. A wise facilitator creates a setting that makes it "safe" for people to speak their truth. A facilitator creates a process around whatever is the desired outcome of the meeting and can hold people to the task.
When I have been brought in to facilitate, I make it a practice of interviewing the participants beforehand and creating a composite of the various "common threads" of concern. In this fashion, no one person is singled out and the meeting can get down to the important elements. Likewise, as an external facilitator, I have no political agenda or job security hanging in the balance. Thus, it frees me to focus totally on helping the participants reach their outcome. Time is the most precious commodity we have. Time-wasting meetings constitute the greatest theft of all. Conduct them well and judiciously and you'll hear people say, "We've got to START meeting like this!".
© 2000 by Eileen McDargh. All rights reserved. Reprints must include byline, contact information and copyright.
About the Author
Eileen McDargh, CSP, CPAE, is an international speaker, author and seminar leader. Her book ‘Work for A Living and Still Be Free to Live’ is also the title of one of her most popular and upbeat programs on Work/Life Balance. For more information on Eileen and her presentations, please call 949-496-8640 or visit her web site at http://www.eileenmcdargh.com.
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| _Additional Resources ... |
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Lifetime Value Online? - David Bell
In "Big Time Banner Advertising," we discuss the importance of establishing an acceptable level of return for your promotional investments. This number becomes the criteria for what is deemed a success and what is deemed a failure. How you determine...
Get more visitors to your website using free Traffic Exchanges - Suzanne Morrison
Trying to get traffic to your new website or to your gateway pages for an affiliate program can be difficult if you are just starting out and have little or no advertising budget. This article will explain how you can use traffic exchanges to...
Are You Utilizing a 5-Point Prospecting System? - Maryanne Fitzgerald
If not, you may be losing out on some very valuable business. First, let me explain What the term ‘5-Point Prospecting’ means. It means that, at any one time, you are using 5 different marketing methods to get your name and business known. Now,...
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