How to Hold a Meeting?

MEETINGS

Good morning everybody. I would like to thank you all for being here. The purpose of my presentation today is to sum up the main points of meetings. So I will try to clarify what the meetings are and why they are so important in the world of business.

So I will start by describing different kinds of meetings. Then I will outline some of the rules how to make a meeting productive, in other words I will share some advice what to do if you are a chairperson or a participant. And finally I will expand on the pitfalls of the international meetings.

But firstly let’s define what a meeting is? In broad sense, it is the place where we communicate our ideas, hash them out, share our passion for better or worse, develop new understandings and new directions. It's where deals can happen or fall apart, where strategies are articulated and debated -- in short -- where we engage with others. That's what it's all about, people are meeting with people.

Now let’s turn to the first point. When people hear the word “meeting” they are tend to think of a larger meetings first – formal occasion, a lot of people sitting around the table, a chairman, an agenda and someone taking minutes. That’s one kind of meetings that can be an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders to discuss the foremost issue or an annual general meeting to bring up to date with the corporate strategy for the next year. Moreover, a good example of this kind of meetings is a board meeting where the directors talk about the company’s current position and make plans for the future. However, far more common are the smaller and less formal meetings when just two or three people get together to discuss something and carry a particular business matter forward. To illustrate this point we can point out such types of meetings as meeting with customer or with suppliers, department meetings. Apart from that there are brainstorming and project meetings which are held not to make decisions...