How well did you lead your last meeting? Did participants accept your guidance and leadership? Did you manage to get new and fresh ideas on the table? Have a frank and honest conversation? Get everyone engaged? And did participants align to your purpose and direction as a meeting leader?
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If you haven’t thought yet about meetings as a platform to propagate ideas then I don’t want to attend your meetings. Because that’s what a good meeting is! And if your meeting is not a platform and do not propagate ideas then I am pretty confident it is a boring,
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You’re in a meeting. The stuff that’s being presented is boring, as is the presenter. You know the discussion will be long and tedious. So you start daydreaming. Dreaming about doing stuff without meeting.
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How to listen deeply in meetings
Meetings are all about communication. Without communication, your meeting would not exist. And communication is as much about listening as about sharing, conveying a message.
Communication is giving and receiving
The word ‘communication’ has a Latin origin of which the root is mun.
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New era requires 21st century meetings!
It’s common wisdom that the complexity in which organisations currently operate requires a different type of organisation. New, however, is that we also need different meetings fitting these new organisations. I call them 21st century meetings
Organising for complexity means a radical shift away from the organisation as we know and learned.
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‘Meetings do cost money. Definitely. And you can find numerous tools that help you calculate the costs of your meetings. Just google for downloadable apps! But what do these numbers really say? It only tells you how much money you invested in the meeting.
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Is improving your meetings a good idea?
Most meetings are an energy drain. Everyone working for or with a big organisation knows that. So I often get clients that would like to start improving meetings, especially their meetings.
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Decisions and consensus are not reached in some settings. If the exchange of ideas has stalled and if all point of views are clear, then change settings towards a cosy and warm atmosphere.
Location: a normal meeting room
‘I don’t understand why you aren’t giving us the information!’ I had lost count on how often I already heard this reproach.
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In my last blog I discussed how great meetings potentially save the world. As an example I used the Climate Talks in Paris of last December, during which the meeting was brought to a successful close by using the Indaba,
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I am on my way back from Kyrgyzstan where I facilitated a 3-day conference. Kyrgyzstan (for those of you who don’t know) is a former Soviet Republic in Central Asia. Hence, it’s one of those countries where the state ruled and intervened in all aspects of individual lives of its citizens.
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