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You are here: Home / Archives for business leadership

Change in Pace: 3 Ways to Improve Boring Meetings

September 10, 2013 by Featured Author Leave a Comment

boring meeting

Meetings are boring, but surviving them seems to be a right of passage in the American workforce. Part of your job description could probably be listed as “endure endless meetings” – even when you are the manager running the show. Meetings do not have to follow the same stale formula without any deviation. You can make the exception to the rule through mixing extra planning and liberal doses of creative thinking into these office gatherings.

Involve everyone

The simplest antidote to a boring meeting is to get everyone involved in the discussion. People become more invested in a meeting when they feel like their presence matters.

Involve the entire group in a meeting and you can enhance the quality of decisions. A study done at Cal-State Northridge found that group discussions are effective in making more information available, generating more ideas, reducing individual bias and producing a decision with fewer errors.

It can start with taking attention away from the person leading the meeting and turning the spotlight back on the group. Encourage people to speak out with ideas and suggestions. Ask open-ended questions. Breakout into group discussions. Give everyone in the meeting a chance to get involved in the decision-making process.

Avoid information overload

Meetings can feel overwhelming if there is too much information to take in all at once. You can prevent this problem by setting an agenda ahead of a scheduled meeting. The agenda can guide what things are discussed in the meeting and offer a road map for the direction of the meeting.

It helps to tackle one issue at a time. Multitasking can serve a good purpose in some situations, but can be a negative influence in a meeting. WebMD notes that the average person can actually lose time shifting between two tasks and take longer to accomplish each task.

One meeting cannot focus on every problem at hand. Set priorities and tackle issues one at a time in order of importance. When things are more specific, it can allow for shorter meetings and better results.

A good rule of thumb is to focus on the issues that are most pertinent to the people in the meeting. This will make it easier to solve problems because you can involve those same people in creating a solution. It allows them to take ownership of the meeting and become more engaged in driving the discussion in positive directions.

Make it count

Meetings represent a significant investment of both time and money. There is no excuse for having a meeting that does not accomplish a tangible purpose.

Make each meeting count by following up on the decisions made in the meeting. The founder of GoDaddy, Bob Parsons, notes that effective leadership requires always moving forward. A leader, according to Parsons, should never stop investing, improving or doing something new because a lack of improvement causes organizations to die.

When you solve problems in meetings, apply those solutions outside the conference room. A meeting that produces measurable results is not a waste of time. Measure progress and offer positive reinforcement to the whole staff when goals are met. It will reinforce the original meeting’s value.

About the Author: Samuel Perry is a PR consultant who lives in Arlington, Va.

Photo used from Flikr by Robert Couse-Baker

Filed Under: Business Goals, Guest Author, Misc, Productivity Tagged With: business leadership, meetings, multitasking

Video: Patrick Donadio on How to get Past Overthinking a Conversation

April 12, 2013 by Scott "Q" Marcus Leave a Comment

This is the seventh in a series of Friday Motivational videos with successful people discussing with Scott how to get past what holds you back. In a hallway meeting at a conference, Scott “Q” Marcus talks with nationally recognized speaker, communication expert, author, and coach Patrick Donadio on how to get past overthinking a conversation.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Business Goals, Communicating, Overcoming Obstacles, Overcoming Perfectionsim, Productivity, Video Tagged With: business leadership, communication, effective communication, Friday Motivational Video, patrick donadio

Video: Christie Ward About How to Overcome Stress

April 5, 2013 by Scott "Q" Marcus Leave a Comment

This is the sixth in a series of Friday Motivational videos with successful people discussing with Scott how to get past what holds you back. In a hallway meeting at a conference, Scott “Q” Marcus asks his long time friend Christie Ward, creator of The Impact Institute, what she does when she’s feeling stressed out.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Gratitude, Overcoming Obstacles, Overcoming Perfectionsim, Productivity, Video Tagged With: business leadership, christie ward, Friday Motivational Video, giving back, how to handle stress, stress at work

Want to Really Change? Keep Track of the Numbers

February 8, 2012 by Scott "Q" Marcus

When my children were young, I registered their growth on the hallway doorjamb with pencil marks and knife notches.

Next to each was inscribed a date and name. Since those statistics are most likely meaningless to the latter owners, I assume sandpaper and lacquer have removed that chronicle; yet I wonder if they left those markings intact, pondering periodically where went “Daniel, January 28, 1988” or “Brandon, April 7, 1989.”

diet health fitness tracking inspirationNumbers are the language by which lives are recorded; history is kept; and even how the universe communicates. This does not denigrate the clout of intuition, emotion, nor hunches; yet, the bottom line — quite literally — is what the numbers say. Whether checking the weight of a newborn; success of a business; leadership of a country; or the future of our planet; it’s “in the numbers.”

Our language is strewn with numeric references. We hope no one “does a number on us,” or that our “number is up.” We “dress to the nines” for elegant receptions, but refrain from becoming “three sheets to the wind.” There are “no two ways about it;” numbers count (um, pardon the pun).

It therefore stands to reason that that which we monitor expands our awareness, affording concern or confidence. So logically, if we want to change something about us, we must establish a baseline and “keep score.”

This process starts before we can count, as illustrated by how the amount of gold stars on a refrigerator can be extremely effective in fine-tuning a child’s behavior. As adults, step one in altering our lifestyles might involve tracking our accumulation of wealth (or lack thereof), or when we anticipate joyful occasions, “counting the days.”

Of course, that means should better health be the objective, we must track the behaviors associated with those goals. A smoker can become an ex-smoker by paying attention to how often he lights up and setting targets to lower that count over time. If physical fitness is the desired outcome, we can write down how often — or how far — we walk or run. We record our blood pressure. We check our weight. We can even monitor our attitude.

All this has been a preamble to one question: “If we agree that keeping track can make our lives better, why don’t we do it more often?” What’s the resistance? [Read more…]

Filed Under: goals, Newspaper Column, Productivity, Weight Loss Tagged With: better health, business leadership, change, dress to the nines, lifestyle change, paying attention, physical fitness, priorities

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