Part 1. Making meetings effective.

I.Read the text and define whether the author is for or against meetings.

What’s a meeting?

In the ideal world, a meeting is a chance for people with shared or developing interests in a common theme to come together to further develop those interests. By the end of the meeting, something should have changed – participants may have agreed on something new, discovered something new or changed their thinking about something. Whatever the purpose of the meeting, it should result in some change, whether immediate or as a result of the meeting.

A good meeting is action focused. It’s not simply a talking shop, but a productive mechanism for making things happen. The best meeting generates focused actions as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Effectively – doing the right things

Efficiently - doing things right

It has been estimated that11 million meetings take place in the USA

every day and that most professionals attend nearby 62 meetings per month. Research suggests that more than 50 per cent of this meeting time is wasted time.

If each meeting is just one hour long, this means that people are spending 31 hours every month in unproductive meetings.

Most people meeting regularly say they daydream (91 per cent), miss meetings (96 per cent), or miss parts of meetings (95 per cent). Many (73 per cent) say that they bring other work to meeting s and 39 per cent say that they have fallen asleep during meetings.

Bad meetings lack purpose and focus and are badly chaired; the agenda is unclear or absent, dominant people use the meeting as a platform for their own political or personal interests and others feel that they have no choice.

Meanwhile, business is all about conversations. Whether you are in manufacturing, a service industry, farming, a local or national governmentdepartments, working as a sole trader or are the chief executive officer of a global company, we all ultimately do business by talking to each other. We can hold our conversations one to one or in groups, in small, formal or informal gatherings, in major conferences or through social media. We cannot avoid meetings!

(from “Successful meetings” by David Cotton)

Exercise 1. Read the text again and answer the questions:

1) What makes a good meeting?

2) What makes a bad meeting?

Write down your ideas in a table given below:

Good meetings Bad meetings

1………………………….. ………………………………..

2 ………………………….. ……………………………

3………………………….. …………………………….

4………………………….. …………………………….

5…………………………. …………………………...

6.……………………………… …………………………….

7……………………………. ……………………………

8……………………………. ………………………………

9…………………………… ………………………………

Exercise 2. Talk about your answers to the following questions:

1) Who is the text directed at?

2) Does the text sound knowledgeable?

3) What is a meeting in an ideal world?

4) What should be achieved by the end of the meeting?

5) How do people deal with meetings?

6) What do bad meetings lack?

7) Who can use a meeting as a platform for their personal interests?

8) What is business all about?

9) What is the most important feature of a meeting?

What is in the heart of a meeting?