A-Z of Successful Meetings–A is for Attendees

Who you have at your meeting is crucial to it’s success.

There is no point trying to solve a problem with a key department not represented or trying to agree expenditure without the budget holder there. Think about what you are trying to achieve and who you need to help you.

The A-Z of Successful Meetings – A is for Agenda

The agenda is a key tool to ensuring a successful meeting. It makes the leader think about the best use of the time in the meeting and outlines to the attendees what will be happening during the meeting. Timings on the agenda are very useful especially if you have a few talkative attendees. The chair can use phrases like “We’ve only got 20 minutes to discuss this so thanks Janet, lets hear from John”

The A-Z of Successful Meetings

During my life in the corporate world, like most people, I spent alot of time in meetings. Often these achieved little and seemed to be devices to fill up the days of managers who wanted to feel important. Once I got involved in business improvement I joined the campaign to improve the meetings experience across the organisation.

Moving into consultancy work has allowed me to carry on my crusade for better meetings. I’ve summarised my ideas in this series of blog posts covering the whole alphabet. I’ll be covering a different letter each week, so watch this space!

Secrets of a good presentation (Part 3 of 3)

This is the third and final part of a three part blog post providing guidance on how to create and deliver an effective presentation. Part 1 provided guidance on how to develop your content. Part 2 gave tips on how to deliver your presentation.

This final part in the series considers how to handle questions and how to prepare for what might go wrong.

Secrets of a good presentation (Part 2 of 3)

This is the second part of a three part blog post providing guidance on how to deliver a good presentation. Part 1 explained how to develop your content. This part focuses on the actual delivery of the presentation.