Page 117 - Communication in Organizations Basic Skills and Conversation Models

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Leading meetings

Practical example

Over the last few years, absence due to illness has increased a fair amount at Dinner Ltd.
Despite all the good intentions to increase employee participation in decision making,
absence due to illness figures remain rather high. Managing Director Freddy Fortune
attended a symposium on absenteeism control and was so inspired by this that he wants
to bring the problem to the attention of his colleagues once again. He has acquired a few
new ideas. First, he wants to explain the problem in a clear way. He then wishes to
discuss with managers the possibility of determining a strategy that can reduce absence
due to illness within a predetermined time period. He drops in on Charlotte Cohen and
asks for data registered by administration about absence due to illness. They concentrate
on the data to see if it is useful for them to have it recorded in neat graphs and tables.
Charlotte knows her job. All the details can be processed within a few days, categorized
into time periods, departments, age categories, sex, and level of education. Together with
Freddy Fortune, Charlotte analyses the data. After that Freddy and Charlotte organize a
meeting with the middle managers Bert Berman and Harry Haddock and the headwaiters
Alex Armstrong, Grace Green and Ronald Rosenthal.

Introduction

A number of questions arise when discussing the theme ‘leading meetings’. Why is the
meeting being held? What is expected from participants in the meeting? Who has to do
what? How should a meeting be held? In this chapter we discuss the goals of the meeting,
the various roles that participants in a meeting fulfil, the difference between task-oriented
and people-oriented behaviour, the tasks that must be performed before, during and after
a meeting and the structure that best fits the goal of the meeting. At the end of the chapter
we provide an overview.

Goal

It is very important that participants in a meeting realize in advance the goal of the
meeting. This prevents a great deal of obscurity and expectations that cannot be realized.
The meeting proceeds more efficiently if all participants pursue the same goal. For
example, a meeting can be meant to inform the participants of new plans, to put a
problem before them, to think up new strategies, to divide tasks, or regularly to go over
the state of affairs. Depending on the goal of the meeting, a choice of structure must be
made and possibly a choice regarding the direction of decision making.