Business Meetings (Lesson 4)

Much of the talking and listening in business place will be in the context of meetings. Business meetings provide cohesiveness and unity of purpose. They help in resolving issues and making decisions. They also help in informing the group members of their duties and tasks. Over 20 million meetings take place in America each day. An average executive spends an average 3 hours a work day in meetings according to a MCI WorldCom Conferencing research. No wonder office goers complain "Meetingitis" has become a plague in the USA -- an occasion for a group of people to take minutes and waste hours. But this happens in the absence of managerial skill. It happens when a meeting begins and closes without an agenda set in advance. Your ability as a manager is judged by how you run a meeting.

Planning the meeting

Identifying your purpose: The more focused your purpose, the more effective the meeting. "Making communication more effective among executives" is a vague agenda. "Should we buy cell phones for all executives?" is a better agenda to meet. But first decide if you NEED to meet. If only two people are going to participate in the meeting then a call or a mail will suffice. It saves cost and time.
Preparing an agenda: Remember to write down the agenda and circulate it well in advance. An agenda or a list of topics to discuss in the meeting helps you prepare for the discussion and stay focused on the plan and course of the meeting. Typically and agenda reads like this:

1. Call to order
2. Roll call
3. Reading and approving minutes of the previous meeting
4. Reports of officers of standing committees
5. Reports of special committees
6. Old business
7. New business
8. Announcements
9. Program
10. Adjournment

Each topic could have a sub-agenda. For eg: New Business-- (1) November press conference (2) Purchase of laptops for senior management (3) Status of remodeling -- Anushka Ravishankar

Everyone at a meeting should have specific reason for being there. All those who can contribute to the resolution of the meeting HAVE to attend. But it is better to keep the numbers small and manageable. Also plan the logistics well. A three hour meeting in uncomfortable chairs in a stuffy room with no air-conditioning may exhaust the members physically and mentally. Punctuality has to be stressed- meetings should begin and end on time. This conveys the message to chronic late comers that decisions will be taken in their absence if they are late. Stick to the agenda as far as possible. But to allow any discussion not on the agenda is prerogative of the leader. It would be wise to allow such discussions if they are directly related to resolution of the problem at hand.

Leading the meeting: Begin the meeting with a statement of purpose and agenda overview. As it progresses, keep time. Encourage quiet members to speak and stop those who ramble with --" I see your point. Now lets move on to the next item". If time permits strategies like brainstorming and role playing could be employed to reach a solution. But for most topics a simple discussion would suffice. To resolve a conflict, state the facts first and diffuse the tension. Then ensure that everyone who is arguing is heard and his position is understood. At the end, summarize what was decided, what are the next steps. Review the assignments to various members. Get an assistant to keep the minutes and circulate it after the meeting. The minutes should be recorded with bias (simply who said what). Every motion has to be seconded and voted for either through a secret ballot or a show of hands. Ensure that the conduct of the meeting follows procedure and decorum. Bickering and philibustering (not allowing others to speak by endlessly rambling on and on and wasting precious time) should be dealt with a admonishment immediately.

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What is communication ? (Lesson 1)

In order to learn Business Communication one must first understand Communication itself. Communication is defined as an exchange of information, knowledge, ideas etc between two individuals using a common set of symbols. Communication is also defined in other ways: Communicaton is the process of sending and receiving messages -- sometimes through spoken and written words and sometimes thrrough non-verbal means such as facial expression, gestures and voice qualities.
The communication model consists of 5 components:
Stimulus>>filter>>message>>medium>>destination.
The stimulus is an event that occurs to create the need for the individual to communicate. The filter is the unique perception of reality of the communicator -- his set of values, culture, emotions at that moment, personality, knowledge, socio-economic status and a host of other variables. The message is the information communicated - the content of it and the medium is the channel through which it is sent and received. The destination is the receiver/s of the message.
According to Marshall Macluhan -- "The medium is the message". He says that the medium you use to convey the message determines the form of the message and also becomes a part of it.
If you were to invite a business acquantaince to dinner, what medium would you choose -- the phone of course. You would call. When you do, the message is a voice message, it is a conversation. If you were to write an a email, it would be a written message, a permanent record. Hence it is medium which identifies the form of the message and becomes the message itself.
Communication can be oral or written. Written communication in a business context are typically email, website, memos, letters, instructions, reports and proposals. Communication can also be formal or informal. Informal communication in an office is often referred to as Grapevine. Communication can move vertically i.e up and down the organizational hierarchy or horizontally (among peers).
Overcoming information anxiety: Richard Wurman believes that the more choices one makes the more the anxiety of having made the wrong one. This he calls Information Anxiety. Consider this: the total amount of information produced worldwide each year is 1.5 exabytes (one exabyte is 1 followed by 18 zeroes). If all this info was stored on floppies it would stack 2 million miles high! Do you we need all this information? Definitely not! Nobody knows it all. The first step in overcoming information anxiety is to accept that there is much you wouldn't understand. Let your igonorance be an inspiration to learn, not something to conceal.
Wurman recommends practising standing in front of a mirror and saying " Could you repeat that" or " I am not sure I understand what you are talking about" instead of just nodding and pretending you understood what you have not.
By seperating what you need to know from what you merely think you should be knowing eases the anxiety. Minimise watching and reading what you don't need. Do what Wurman says : "Most information is useless; give yourself permission to dismiss it".
Happy communicating !!

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