Martin Manser - Meetings

William Collins

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London SE1 9GF

WilliamCollinsBooks.com

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2020

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by HarperCollins Publishers

Published in Canada by HarperCollins Canada . www.harpercollins.ca

Published in Australia by HarperCollins Australia . www.harpercollins.au

Published in India by HarperCollinsPublishersIndia . www.harpercollins.co.in

Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers 2020

Martin Manser asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008389895

Ebook Edition © January 2020 ISBN: 9780008133825

Version: 2019-11-18

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

1 Why have meetings?

1.1 Know your purpose

1.2 What can go wrong in meetings?

1.3 Calculate the cost of meetings

1.4 Who makes decisions in meetings?

1.5 Know the different roles

2 Prepare well for meetings

2.1 Make the practical arrangements

2.2 Invite the relevant people

2.3 Plan an agenda

2.4 Prepare for a meeting

2.5 Prepare for negotiations

2.6 On the day of the meeting

3 Chairing a meeting

3.1 Before the meeting

3.2 Guide the meeting skilfully

3.3 Get out of a rut

3.4 Come to a decision firmly

3.5 Have SMART action points

3.6 Manage change well

3.7 Develop your skills as chair

4 Taking minutes

4.1 Before the meeting

4.2 During the meeting

4.3 After the meeting

4.4 Write up the minutes

4.5 Develop your skills as minute-taker

5 Giving a presentation

5.1 Know the aims of your presentation

5.2 Think and plan creatively

5.3 Work on your words

5.4 Plan your beginning, middle and end

5.5 Use PowerPoint wisely

5.6 Present tables and charts skilfully

5.7 Manage your nerves

5.8 Be aware of your body language

5.9 Control your voice

5.10 Deal with questions

6 Taking part in a meeting

6.1 Participate actively

6.2 Remember names

6.3 Think creatively

6.4 Listen well

6.5 Speak persuasively

6.6 Discuss positively

6.7 Conduct your negotiations

6.8 Finalize your negotiations

6.9 A phone call is a meeting

6.10 Video conferencing

6.11 Revive your meeting

7 After the meeting

7.1 Communicate decisions well

7.2 Move forward

7.3 Keep up momentum between meetings

7.4 Check your progress regularly

7.5 Maintain good relationships

7.6 Evaluate your meeting

Footnotes

Jargon buster

Further reading

About the Book

About the Author

About the Publisher

Meetings! Think how many business meetings you’ve been to. It’s very easy to focus on the negative side of how time has been wasted and colleagues have been discouraged. The aim of this book, however, is to help you move ahead positively and to suggest ways in which you can make meetings even more useful.

I write as someone who has chaired meetings, taken minutes and sat as an active participant in countless meetings in the business world and also in schools and charities over the last four decades. But I also write as one who is not a natural leader, even though I have been called upon to chair meetings, take the minutes (sometimes at the same time as chairing!), so I have learnt certain skills. It is these that I want to pass on to you: if I have learnt to do it, I believe you can too.

This book contains 50 secrets of success, spread over seven chapters. These are:

Whatever your role in a meeting, you can become more confident.

There are many different kinds of meeting: for example, an appraisal to consider individual performance and set goals and targets for the future, a team meeting to consider the work of the team, a conference at which experts give papers on a specialist subject, or a large Annual General Meeting to review a year’s work in a company or organization.

But whatever their format or length, meetings all have certain features in common: you need to know their purpose, prepare for them carefully, conduct them well and follow them up effectively for them to be considered successful.

It may seem unnecessary to discuss the purpose of meetings, but it is a question that has probably occurred to you when you are in the middle of a long, boring meeting: ‘Why am I here? What are we actually achieving?’ So before the meeting starts, you need to work out what you want to achieve during the meeting.