Meeting. Meeting Preparation

Meetings play an important role in business communication. Their success depends not only on the prestige of people and companies, but also on the very possibility of continuing business activities. To be successful in the field of business meetings, you need to have an understanding of their types and various rules for conducting them. All this will be discussed in this paper.

In addition to business conversations and negotiations, business meetings play an important role in managerial communication, which are a way of open collective discussion of certain issues. The meeting is held when there is a need to exchange information, identify opinions, analyze problem situations, and make necessary production decisions.

Business meetings can be divided into problematic, instructive and operational, depending on the goals and tasks that the Manager wants to solve.

A problem meeting is held in a small circle of narrow specialists or competent persons in order to find the optimal management solution to the issues being discussed. The scheme for resolving such issues includes the report, questions on the report, its discussion and development of a General decision, which is adopted by a vote of those present and approved.

The instructional meeting is organized directly by the management unit (specific performers) in order to communicate to employees the General task, transfer orders, and necessary information on the management vertical or horizontal, depending on the levels of performers.

An operational (dispatcher) meeting is called to get information about the current state of Affairs according to the scheme of vertical distribution of information. A special feature of such meetings is that they are held precisely on the appointed days and hours, which allows participants to plan their own activities. Unscheduled operational meetings are held only for emergencies.

The most interesting is the problem meeting due to its complexity and importance for the development of the enterprise. After all, there are many different ways to exchange information vertically: orders, instructions, letters, reviews, memos, and so on.

The main purpose of the meeting is group problem solving. It is known that 90 % of fruitful ideas arise from the contact of opinions, and this probably explains the prevalence of such a collective form of searching for solutions as a meeting.

There are a number of simple rules that can significantly improve the effectiveness of meetings.

1. Precise definition of its theme and purpose.

The topic of the meeting is the subject of discussion. The more precisely it is formulated, the more likely it is to get the desired result. It is better to identify topics specifically and in an active way.

The meeting agenda is sent to all participants in advance, including the topic and purpose of the meeting; the list of issues discussed; the start and end time of the meeting; the place where it will take place; the names of the speakers, co-rapporteurs responsible for preparing questions; and the time allotted for each question.

The total duration of the meeting should not exceed two hours. However, if trying to finish a meeting on time becomes an end in itself, it may lead to sacrificing important discussion and valuable ideas to save a few minutes. Naturally, in this case it is more reasonable to allow an exception.

2. The organization of the spatial environment.

It is recommended that the participants be seated so that people can see each other during the meeting. This contributes to the best perception of information. You should also take care of the compatibility of personnel. Under equal conditions, people who are sitting opposite each other are more likely to conflict, and less often those who are sitting next to each other. The organizer of the meeting, knowing the characters and other psychological characteristics of the invited, can, without drawing attention to this, put the participants so that those who can emotionally break down and interfere with the consideration of issues do not turn out to be vis-a-vis.

3. Accommodation of meeting participants.

4. Notifying and informing participants.

Notifying and providing participants with information materials is a necessary element of the preparation of the meeting. It is necessary to inform the participants of the meeting a few days in advance. Draft decisions, abstracts, and references can be sent as attachments to the agenda.

In order to ensure that high-quality decisions are made at the meeting without unnecessary waste, the Manager must remove barriers that prevent it. The sources of a successful or unsuccessful meeting are in three areas:

1) personal characteristics of participants

2) interaction of participants among themselves

3) organizing the meeting process itself.