Think about the last meeting you attended, perhaps with your team – who was there? And how did that affect the outcome of the meeting? Our guest blogger, Lesley Tulley poses this question.

Before pretty much every meeting you attend you will, consciously or unconsciously, have played a lot of it out in your mind already and would probably confidently bet a reasonable amount on the outcome. And it’s not just you doing this. Everyone else going to the same meeting has more than likely done the same thing. The first question might then naturally be, why have the meeting at all? And in many cases that would no doubt be a fine question and asking it would save a lot of time and hassle and increase productivity. Those are the meetings when you feel like you are going through the motions and having a meeting because, well, it’s what you do, isn’t it?

However, reducing the number of meetings is not what I am interested in here. What interests me is how you can view the members of your team, or the participants at any given meeting, in a way which will drive successful outcomes and make meetings a valuable use of your, and everyone else’s, time. (more…)