Give them food for thought
Here’s an inexpensive tactic that could elicit great suggestions from employees who might not normally volunteer to contribute.
Category: Meetings
Scheduling tricks for multi-time zones
If you have contacts scattered around the globe, it’s important to make sure you’re correctly scheduling meetings across all time zones, writes technology expert Dave Johnson. Here’s how.
Turn meetings into relationship builders
Meetings tend to get a bad rap. People complain that they stir conflict and competition among co-workers and generally represent a waste of time. It doesn’t have to be that way. Executive coach Mary Jo Asmus offers six ideas for organizing better meetings that can help strengthen workplace relationships.
50 verbs to spice up your writing
If you find yourself repeating the same words over and over when you take minutes, Executive Assistant Nickey Christmas, who blogs all things PA, EA and VA related on her Practically Perfect PA blog, offers a good list of verbs “that you can slot into the minutes as and when you need them.”
Should you take notes in meetings electronically?
For some people, a computer will never replace a pen and paper for note-taking during meetings. But for others, electronic notes may make more sense, especially if they have to share them electronically anyway. Here are three questions to determine which way is best.
Quick Parts meeting management
If you frequently use the same words, phrases or paragraphs, you probably open up old meeting notices or emails to copy and paste. With Outlook 2010’s Quick Parts, you essentially have a permanent clipboard. For example, say you have specific language that you use for mandatory meetings. Here’s what to do.
Get a great deal on your meeting space
If you want to get the most for your money when booking meeting or event space, you need to negotiate, says Anthony Coyle-Dowling. Don’t just accept the price you’ve always paid for the place you usually use or take the first price you’re quoted at a new location.
Let Outlook help prep meeting attendees
Let’s say you have a meeting scheduled to discuss resolving customer complaints. To prepare for the meeting, attendees search their inboxes and network drives to find related files they’ll need to begin visualizing a process. By inserting some of these objects into the meeting notice, you can help attendees better prepare for the meeting.
Peppered with questions? Here’s an answer
If dozens of daily interruptions siphon away your time, a series of Lunch ānā Learns might be the solution.
Rein in meeting disruptions
Few things annoy office workers more than unnecessary and unproductive meetings, surveys find. People wander off topic, send texts instead of listening, and behave in all sorts of dysfunctional ways. Keep your team meetings on task by adopting a few techniques.