8 ways to make meetings more tolerable
Changing the venue, providing food, and starting on time are just a few techniques for keeping your gatherings efficient while spurring creativity.
As we can all attest, business meetings often waste valuable productive time and tend to last far longer than they should.
Until we learn to communicate telepathically, they will remain a necessary evil—not just as a means of exchanging ideas and information—but also as a way to build relationships.
That doesn’t mean we have to like them.
It’s all about the value of time
As economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell quipped, “People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” Whether he meant it facetiously or not, there’s a grain of truth in Sowell’s statement. Someone who enjoys meetings might actually prolong them and anything else they laid their hands on.
Making the most of meetings
You might never actually enjoy meetings, but you can make them more tolerable with these tips:
1. Decide whether a given meeting is necessary. You may discover you can handle the issue with a few emails or a conference call. Why call a meeting if you don’t need one?
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