Meeting Management

No matter what career you choose, you will either attend meetings or conduct meetings. Meetings are a vital component of the success of any group or organization. Unfortunately, they have earned a bad reputation because so many meetings are considered little more than time robbers. That's because the meeting organizer or presenter didn't have the skills you'll learn in this program.

In this audiobook, leading consultants Dick and Emily Axelrod share a way to meet that enables you to get work done right there in the meeting, an approach they’ve spent 30 years field testing. Using the same work-design principles that transformed the mind-numbing assembly line into the dynamic factory floor and make video games so engaging, they offer a flexible, repeatable process that has already been used to run thousands of productive meetings in all kinds of organizations.

Top speechwriter Simon Lancaster explains that the secret of brilliant communication is all about making connections. Whether in speech or in writing, at a networking event or in an email, at work or at home, the best communicators find ways of connecting with their audiences. More than that, they are able to connect the personal with the universal, the past with the present, the abstract with the everyday, the visual with the verbal, the moral with the mundane.

One mediocre meeting after another quietly corrodes our organization, and every day we allow it to happen. Culture change occurs when a transformational idea spreads to enough people. Like a virus that makes its way from person to person, spreading exponentially faster, so can the Modern Meeting. The status quo must go. Now. Before it's too late.

Collaboration, discussion, and interaction are the lifeblood of a company’s progress and innovation. Unfortunately, meetings can hamper these collaborations when they’re poorly planned, badly run, and haphazardly organized. With the guidance and advice of meeting management expert J.W. Dionne, you’ll find out exactly what you have to do.

Enchantment, as defined by bestselling business guru Guy Kawasaki, is not about manipulating people. It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility and civility into affinity. It changes the skeptics and cynics into the believers and the undecided into the loyal. Enchantment can happen during a retail transaction, a high-level corporate negotiation, or a Facebook update.

We've decided by consensus that consensus is good. In In Defense of Troublemakers, psychologist Charlan Nemeth argues that this principle is completely wrong: left unchallenged, the majority opinion is often biased, unoriginal, or false. It leads planes and markets to crash, causes juries to convict innocent people, and can quite literally make people think blue is green. In the name of comity, we embrace stupidity. We can make better decisions by embracing dissent. Dissent forces us to question the status quo, consider more information, and engage in creative decision-making.

For decades Tom Peters has been preaching the gospel of putting people first, and in today's rapidly changing business environment, this message is more important than ever. With his unparalleled expertise and inimitable charisma, Peters provides a roadmap for you and your organization to thrive amidst the tech tsunami, and he has a lot of fun doing it. The Excellence Dividend is an important new book from one of today’s greatest business thinkers.

Leadership literature is full of principles and ideas - but they rarely leave the page. Practice is what turns abstract concepts into useful skills. Leadership Step by Step walks listeners through what to do and how to do it in an integrated and comprehensive progression of exercises designed to cultivate key abilities, behaviors, and beliefs through experience. The 22 exercises in this hands-on book help you accomplish the inner work and gain the social skills required for great leadership.

In this fun and provocative book, Michael Fanuele, one of the world’s most successful marketing strategists, shares The Six Skills of Inspiration. With insights from music, politics, business, neuroscience, and a recipe for radishes, Stop Making Sense shares the creative blueprint that can unleash the inspiring leader in all of us.

Every day at work, people do three things: talk, listen, and pretend to listen. That's not surprising when you consider that the average attention span has dropped to 8 seconds. To break through, says high-stakes communications expert Paul Hellman, you need to focus on your audience, be slightly different, and deliver with finesse.

Many experienced facilitators, OD consultants, coaches, and organizational leaders increasingly find themselves standing in the fire - working in situations where group and community members are polarized, angry, fearful, and confused. Facilitator Larry Dressler has come to believe that simply picking up yet another method or technique wont help in situations like these. What has a truly transformational impact is what he calls the "facilitator's presence".

Many people struggle with remote meetings: a cocktail of factors, such as technical barriers and invisible group norms, increase the uncertainty and risk of the already vulnerable task of collaborating and sharing ideas. When remote meetings go badly, they go really badly. Few things feel as lonely and intimidating as speaking to a screen with unreadable faces staring back in silence. This book will help you improve the quality of your remote meetings.

11 Deadly Presentation Sins combines lessons from the worlds of business and entertainment to help you give the performance of your life. You'll learn from Seth Godin and Star Trek, Romeo & Juliet and Ricky Gervais, Steve Jobs and Saturday Night Live. Whether you're talking to colleagues, customers, or the community, in a boardroom, ballroom, or church basement, you'll come away with the confidence and skills you need when all eyes are on you.

Follow along as Dr. Liker explains the Lean Leadership Development Model (LLDM) and how it aligns with the accepted principles of operational excellence. The teaching objectives for this section are to share another Gary Convis example of Dana, a company in crisis; share the implementation roadmap and results achieved in a very short time; and discuss the visualization and meeting management standards and responsibilities.

The Meeting Planning Process: A Guide to Planning Successful Meetings by certified meeting professional Mary Jo Wiseman offers a common-sense approach to managing the meeting planning process based on the knowledge and experience she garnered over a 20-plus-year career as a corporate meeting and event coordinator. The author’s systematic approach to project management helped her to get and stay focused on the task at hand while handling multiple details, projects, and deadlines throughout her career, and she wants to share her secrets for success with others.

When you ask leaders in a high performing organization about the key to their success, the answers are all over the place: failing fast, radical transparency, operational excellence, strong core values...so many different North Stars to follow. Then, if you ask them for an example - to tell you what that looks like in practice - they will all describe a meeting. Leaders at these organizations have learned to design a sequence of tailored meetings that create a healthy organizational culture and drive forward momentum. They know that meetings are where the action is.

There's no question that executive-level conversations are difficult ones. When we surveyed managers about executive conversations, 90 percent said these conversations are harder, and an overlap of 20 percent said that they are significantly harder. Executives are a tough audience. Luckily they are also a predictable one.

Have you ever heard yourself or someone else say: "Some of my best friends are...(Black, White, Asian, etc.)"? or "I don't think of you as...(Gay, Disabled, Jewish, etc.)"? or "I don't see color, I'm colorblind"? These statements and dozens like them can build a divide between us and the people we interact with. Though well-intended, they often widen the diversity gap sometimes causing irreparable harm personally and professionally.

Since the late 1800s, Robert's Rules of Order has been used in corporate governance and executive boardrooms. Robert's Rules of Order were designed to properly assemble a group of people, of any size. It's a form of organizing assemblies intelligently. Any group, society, or assembly who adopts Robert's rules has the liberty to adopt their own rules - eventually creating their own book of rules.