How to Manage With Questions

The art of management often involves asking questions.  Lots of them.  Here’s a list of ten questions to ask as you travel throughout your organization.  If you ask these questions as part of your routine, you’ll teach your people that their opinions matter. What made you mad today? What took too long? What caused complaints [...]

Leading the Successful Meeting – Part 5

The final segment of my 5 part series on leading successful meetings. Here I discuss how to ensure the meeting results in action being taken. Action Taken As A Result Of the Meeting Very few things are as irritating as leaving a meeting knowing that nothing was accomplished and time was wasted.  The meeting leader must manage [...]

Leading the Successful Meeting – Part 4

Part 4 in my series on leading successful meetings explores strategies in obtaining active participation from all involved. Getting Active Participation from Everyone A frequent lament among managers is their inability to get people to participate in meetings. Chances are managers with problems in this area are either making errors of commission, omission or both. Errors [...]

Leading the Successful Meeting – Part 3

Part 3 in my series on leading successful meetings examines the importance of paying attention to both task and process through the four stages of group development. Task And Process When a group meets for decision-making and problem solving, the meeting is clearly task-oriented.  It would seem that if procedures and operating agreements are established, and the [...]

Leading the Successful Meeting – Part 2

Here’s part 2 in my series on leading successful meetings. A look at defining outcomes, clarifying agendas and establishing procedures: Outcomes Are Well Defined Up Front A sure road to the failure of a meeting is to begin it without clearly defining outcomes and then verifying that participants either have the same outcomes in mind [...]