COMMUNICATION IN MANAGEMENT

Unit 5: Meetings

Planning and Conducting Meetings.

Meeting Planning
Meeting planning sets the agenda for the meeting. It includes who will be in
attendance, when and where the meeting will take place as well as what will occur
during and after the meeting.

Meeting Planning Steps

When planning for a productive meeting you have to ask yourself the who, what
why, where and how questions more commonly associated with journalism. Here
are the steps to effective meeting planning:
1. Determine the Purpose of the Meeting
Don’t set up a meeting without first understanding why there should be a meeting.
If there’s no good reason to meet, don’t meet. But if there is, then that purpose should
be clearly defined and focused. You don’t want to bite off more than you can chew
in a meeting.
2. Set Goals for Your Meeting
Meetings should get a group of people from one point to another, whether that’s just
making them clear on some topic or assigning work to individuals. Make sure you
have a goal in mind before setting up the meeting. That way you can make sure that
goal has been accomplished before the meeting breaks.
3. Identify Who Should Attend the Meeting
Not everyone needs to attend every meeting. Don’t invite people that have no interest
in involvement in what the meeting is going to discuss. Keep the attendance of those
who are involved in some manner with the subject of the meeting.
4. Notify Attendees in Advance
The meeting should be announced with enough time so that everyone can make sure
they have scheduled time on their calendar. Never spring a meeting on people
without notice. They might not be able to attend and, even if they can, they’ll be
upset by the abruptness. It shows a lack of concern for their time.
5. Prepare the Content for Your Meeting
Have an agenda written prior to the meeting. This will provide an outline of what
will be discussed during the meeting. If you need any supporting documentation to
hand out, be sure to have it printed prior to the meeting. The last thing you want to
do is be unprepared. It’s not professional.
6. Define the Duration of Your Meeting
Meetings can have a tendency to go on and on. To avoid a meeting that never ends,
set a time limit. How much time do you realistically need to do what the meeting
calls for? That’s the duration of the meeting.
7. Create a Meeting Agenda
We’ve already mentioned the need for an agenda. Now you can write it. Start with
an icebreaker to get everyone comfortable and then list the topics, including any
takeaways or action items that will need to be completed before the next meeting.
8. Write Meeting Minutes
A secretary should be selected to keep meeting minutes, which are a short summary
of the main points made during the meeting. This can include what was said by the
meeting leader and those in attendance as well as any action items that will be
executed before the next meeting.

Conduct a planning meeting

To ensure your meeting is productive and efficient, consider following these steps
for managing a planning meeting:
1. Form a planning committee
A planning committee often includes anyone who's responsible for part of the
initiative or who will make important decisions to advance the project. If you missed
an employee, you could always request they attend the next meeting and provide
them with the notes for any missed meetings. This can help ensure they can catch up
and have the same understanding of the project as everyone else.
2. Include an icebreaker
Some meeting attendees might now know one another, so starting with an icebreaker
can get everyone more comfortable with the group. Icebreakers also can help
participants have fun so the meeting can start strong with engaged attendees. You
can use various icebreakers, such as games, puzzles or questionnaires.
3. Establish a timeline
Consider setting a timeline for your initiatives or projects to follow, which can help
the team focus and better understand how to complete them. Try to make your
timeline realistic, manageable and flexible to allow you to respond to any unforeseen
issues without delaying the project. You also may benefit from accounting for other
projects team members may have, which can help you schedule labor and set a more
pragmatic timeline.
4. Decide on vendors
When you start working on the project's plan, try to decide whether your team may
benefit from hiring outside vendors for specific tasks. You can establish a vendor
budget and use the meeting to discuss how many vendors you can hire and for which
duties. For example, if you're planning an end-of-the-year office party for the
company, you may want to hire food and entertainment vendors. If you're updating
the company website, you may work with a company specializing in online
content search engine optimization.
5. Assign tasks and due dates
As you progress in your meeting, you can assign tasks to group members. Consider
using a project management system or assigning one team member to lead everyone
toward project completion. At the end of the meeting, you can schedule a follow-up
meeting so everyone remains on schedule and knows their responsibilities. You can
use an online calendar to share with the group to have an easily accessible place for
people to review their duties and deadlines.
Meeting Process.

1. Clarify Aim/Purpose – It is very important, at the beginning of the meeting,

to clarify and agree the purpose of the meeting. This promotes focus and
clarity in the event of conversation drift, or if members feel lost in the
process. There is also an opportunity here for introductions (new
members/guest presenters) and for group members to highlight their reason
for attendance.
2. Assign Roles – There are 4 roles to be assigned:
1. Leader – The team leader role is not intended to be a power position,
but rather a functional one. The leader can be the person who called
the meeting, or can ask for a volunteer to lead the meeting. It is also
appropriate to rotate this role to support development of group
members. The leader’s role is to start the meeting, ensure that the
agenda is followed with smooth transitions between agenda items and
to conclude the meeting.
2. Recorder – The recorder role is crucial to ensure that key ideas, themes
and actions are recorded for all to see. Recording on flip charts around
the meeting room is encouraged. This means the notes are there for
people to see and review before they add their thoughts. This
minimises duplication that often occurs because people are busy
thinking and may miss a contribution someone has already made.
3. Timekeeeper – The timekeeper keeps everyone on track with agreed
timings for each agenda item, whilst also making appropriate
contributions to any discussion. Once timings have been agreed for
each agenda item, the time keeper should follow a rule of 50%.
4. Facilitator – As much as possible the group should identify someone
with accomplished facilitation skills for this role. The role of facilitator
can be challenging and may not be required for every group situation.
The facilitator will observe the meeting progress ensuring that all
participants have an opportunity to contribute and that the group
remains focussed on the agenda and the process.
3. Review Agenda and Times – This should be a quick review of proposed
agenda items and clarification of late agenda submissions. Best practice
would be to ensure that all group members have an opportunity to contribute
and agree agenda items beforehand. Once the agenda items are agreed, a
short time should be spent agreeing approximate time slots; this should take
no more than a few minutes.
4. Work through Agenda – The majority of the meeting should be devoted to
working through agenda items. Steps 1 -3 and 5 -7 should take no longer than
 5 minutes each, enabling an efficient, productive discussion focussed on the
agenda items.
5. Review meeting record – When the agenda items have been discussed, the
leader should take the opportunity to quickly review what has been
accomplished, the key actions and responsibility for follow-up.
6. Plan Next Steps and Next Agenda – Based on what has been accomplished,
the leader should ask the group to determine what the agenda items should be
for the next meeting. Consequently, the group should leave the meeting with
a clear understanding of the purpose and focus of the next meeting.
7. Evaluate – This final step supports the group to stay on track and improve
future meetings. There are 3 steps to evaluation. Each group member should
allocate a score ranging from 0 (worst meeting ever) to 10 (effective and
efficient meeting where expectations were surpassed and progress was
made).

Ways to Effectively Lead a Meeting.

1. Set the agenda
“Give me an agenda or else I’m not going to sit there, because if I don’t know why
we’re in the meeting, then there’s no reason for a meeting.” — Annette Catino, chief
executive of the QualCare Alliance Network.
No meetings can be productive if the people attending don’t know what is
happening. Even though it may seem obvious, a lot of meetings start with no clear
sense of purpose.
2. Allow everyone to participate
Most of the time, just one or two people in the meeting talk the entire time and
dominate the whole conversation. To prevent this from happening, assign relevant
roles, topics, or updates that each participant (or most) can share with everyone.
3. Start and end on time
How many times have you attended a meeting and had to wait for the person in
charge to show up? Far too many. It’s the most draining thing ever, takes away all
the energy you must attend the meeting. It mostly happens with people in positions
of power, and it’s a terrible habit.
4. Respect people’s time
On the same note as the point before, respecting people’s time is extremely
important. In the book High Output Management, Andy Grove argues that wasting
employees’ time is the same as stealing money from your company.
5. Adopt a clear communication style
As the leader of the meeting, it’s important to articulate the ideas and opinions
clearly and succinctly. This will encourage others to do the same and keep
everything a lot simpler and clearer.
6. Be firm but also flexible
As each agenda point is discussed throughout the meeting, new issues or topics of
discussion are likely to come up. If relevant to all the attendees and pertinent to the
objectives of the meeting, it’s a good idea to explore these new topics, if you have
time. Remember, always make sure you’re able to end the meeting on time.
7. Allow some time for brainstorming and open conversation
Making people feel like they have a say and that their opinions matter. It’ll only
contribute to making people feel good.
8. Share meeting notes
In her book Resilient Management, a good book on productivity, management coach
and trainer Lara Hogan says that sending out a recap email after each meeting is a
great way to reinforce decisions and clarify the final decisions that were made.
9. Request the team’s feedback
When was the last time someone asked for your feedback on a certain topic at work?
Every employee would like for their managers to request some input from their side.
It means they care. That they value their opinion. So, if you’re in the position to do
it, just do it!
10. Close the meeting effectively
Well, once the agenda points have been covered, and all the questions have been
answered, it’s important to bring the meeting to a logical conclusion.
Evaluating Meetings and Drafting Minutes of a Meeting.
1. T-chart

Draw a line down the middle of a flip chart or a white board. On one half write the
word “Keep” and on the other half the word “Change.”
Ask people to reflect on the meeting and yell out things they think should be kept or
changed for the next meeting. You’ll need to encourage them to be candid about the
problems they saw. This method is fast and usually yields an insight or two.
2. Letter grade

Each person gives the meeting a letter grade (A-F). After recording the grades, ask
people for one or two reasons they graded the meeting as they did.
If letter grades give you flashbacks, use a scale similar to the one in the picture at
the beginning of this article. Those hand-drawn emoticons can be quite useful in
capturing people’s opinions.
3. Paper survey
Distribute a short survey card at the end of the meeting that asks people to comment
directly on the evaluation questions.
You can combine a few quantitative questions with a couple open-ended questions.
These could once again be something simple like keep and change, but now people
don’t have to be so public in their opinions.
4. Electronic survey
Use a quick follow-up web-based survey. This provides a way for the group to
provide anonymous feedback.
These days, with many meetings happening remotely, it’s easy to implement the
survey through Microsoft Teams or the team collaboration tool you used.
Set up a standard survey and just repeat it to your group after every meeting. If you
make it easy and act on the what you learn, you will help raise your group’s
willingness to provide feedback.

E-mail, Business Reports and Proposals:

E-mail Etiquettes,
1. Use a direct subject line
In many cases, people decide to open an email based purely on the subject line.
Strong subject lines are brief, descriptive, and whenever possible, action-oriented.
For example, "Board Meeting moved to Tuesday, 11/21" is a stronger subject line
than "meeting date changed."
2. Use a professional email address
Obviously, having your emails deleted is the last thing you want. One of the best
ways to ensure that doesn't happen is to avoid using a non-branded or nondescript
address.
3. The “reply-all” button should be used sparingly
Nobody likes to open or read emails that have nothing to do with them, their
department, or their individual responsibilities.
4. Add a professional email signature
Professional email signatures can lead to higher ROI rates if you're engaged in
marketing campaigns. It makes sense to give your reader additional information
about you or your company. Usually, an email signature includes your full name,
title, company name, and contact information.
5. Use professional greetings
It’s important to learn how to use professional greetings when it comes to email
etiquette.
6. Be wary of excessive exclamation points
If you are in the habit of using exclamation points, be careful to limit them when
expressing your enthusiasm or excitement.
7. Be careful when using humor
Without the corresponding facial expressions or tone of voice, any humor used over
email can easily get lost in translation. In fact, it is better to rather leave all forms of
humor off professional email exchanges unless you know the receiver very well.
8. Reply to all your emails
The dramatic changes we’ve experienced post COVID-19 pandemic have led to
major transformations in the ways we conduct business. Our workplace
communication is changing dramatically and how we use our email is a perfect
example.
9. Always proofread before pressing send
Don't depend solely on your standard spell checker. Your email recipients will likely
notice mistakes, and while the occasional typo happens to everyone, repeated
mistakes and misspellings can look sloppy.
10. Double-check the recipient addresses
Do your best to be accurate and pay particular attention when you type a name from
your contacts list on the "To" line. It's unfortunately very easy to choose the wrong
name, which can be embarrassing for you and the person receiving the email by
accident.

Smartness and Presentation.

Address (To)

Who should you send the e-mail to? If it was letter you would think carefully as to
who should receive the e-mail, but because it is easy to add people to an e-mail the
temptation is to send it to too many people.

Subject

It is easy to be lazy with an e-mail subject title – but it needs same thought as any
other heading line. It actually requires more thought, as some people reject or open
an e-mail based on the

subject line (and / or the sender name). This one is easy to fix simply by using the
principles of effective headings.

The subject must also relate to the body of the e-mail. Easy and obvious when you
write the first e-mail, but more important when you reply to an e-mail you receive.
It is very easy for the subject and the content to lose each other.

Be SMART with your subject line

S – Specific

M – Meaningful

A – Appropriate

R – Relevant

T - Thoughtful

The second danger here is that the e-mail string (all the previous e-mails) in the same
message may contain something that one or more of the most recent recipients (To)
should not actually see.
Body of e-mail

Salutation:

E-mail is often used as an informal way of communicating, and this is reflected in

the salutation people use (if they use one at all). We are only concerned here with
business emails … so you need to use the same rules as you would for a letter. If you
are addressing a broader group of people then you need to think about the group
salutation.

Introduction and main text:

Like a letter, you should structure the content of an email. One of the main
advantages of an email is to get information to people very rapidly. How long and
complex should the e-mail content be if it is to be effective?

Remember, some people (hands up) use phone for receiving email … so scrolling
and attachments may be an issue.

An email should be short and any detailed information should be placed as an

attachment. How much scrolling is too much scrolling?

Use a very short introduction (one or two lines) followed by short paragraphs.

An e-mail is no excuse for bad English, and yet all too often people use non-standard
abbreviations, fail to use a spell checker, and generally treat the email as if it is not
really important.

Close:

As with a letter, it is good to have a single closing sentence. The most frequently
used is something along the lines of:

‘I look forward to your reply’

This is not really a good closer, and you should give thought to what the final line
will be. Maybe something like:

‘I look forward to discussing this with you in our meeting next Monday’

Signature Block: The use and content of a signature block is usually determined by
company policy and you may have a guideline for this. The main purpose of the
signature block is allow the recipient(s) to identify the sender and to be able to
contact them if required (the ‘Reply To’ option in the email only allows you to write
back … and that might not be the best way to respond).

The minimum content for a signature block is usually:

Name

Job Title

Phone number

If you have a standard signature block then you set this to automatically be displayed
every time you compose an e-mail and every time you reply to an e-mail.

Business Reports and Proposals: Writing and Purpose.

Writing A Business Report
Audience

The audience of the report should be identified early in the writing process. An
audience’s background, knowledge, and need for the information need to be
characterized for the report to be usable. Further questions as to why the audience
needs this information should also be identified. What circumstances brought about
the need for this information? In answering these questions early in the writing
process, the author will be able to anticipate questions the reader might have.

Purpose

Remember when compiling a business report that it needs to hold the interest of the
reader. To accomplish this goal, one must be attentive to the overall design. There
should be enough factual information to make the report credible, but not so much
dry, technical language as to lose the reader on the first page. By interspersing charts,
graphs, and pictures, the author will increase the likelihood that the report will hold
the reader’s interest and focus.

Graphics

It is important to include graphics in a report. Graphics are visual descriptions of

information that can be easily understood by the reader. In many work settings the
audience is a business professional with limited time. Various graphics can help to
convey the pertinent information quickly. It is important to take the reader centered
approach when creating graphics. Consider your audience and what information you
want to convey. Examples of graphics are:

• pie charts: Pie charts are useful for showing different portions or
divisions of a whole. For example, showing what percentages of
expenses come from which department in a company.
• bar graphs: Bar graphs can be used to show the amounts or frequency
of occurrence of different characteristics of data.
• trend graphs: Trend graphs show how data is distributed over time.
Trend graphs are also known as X/Y scatter plots.
• pictures: Pictures and illustrations are useful in manuals or instructions
to show the subject you are writing about. They can also make a
document more interesting and intriguing.

Factual Detail

A good report includes factual details that support the purpose of the report. Keep
the reader in mind when selecting these details because too many technical details
may be difficult to understand. The details should support the purpose of the report
and be necessary for the reader to be persuaded.

Research Methods

While composing a business report or any report requiring factual information it is

important to conduct research. By using credible information you will establish
credibility, meet your reader’s needs, and persuade your audience. The following are
5 methods of conducting research.

Using your memory and creativity to explore ideas

• Brainstorming, free writing, or creating flow charts, matrices, or cluster sketches

Internet

• Using search engines or internet directories. Be careful during this to ensure proper
citation and the sights you are getting information from are credible sources and not
just a bloggers opinion.
Libraries

• Using indexes, references, government documents, or computerized full-text

sources

Interviewing

• Conducting a face-to-face interview or telephone interview. Make sure you know

something about the person or have a reference. People are generally more willing
to set up interviews when they are not “cold calls”

Surveys

• Conducting a survey to retrieve information from a large group of people. When

dealing with the results, remember who it is that you surveyed to see if there could
be skewed results.

Documentation

Information borrowed from another source needs to be cited. Variations of citation

methods can be used for the report. The most important part is making sure to include
citations. Not only will you lose credibility among colleges for plagiarism, you can
be sued and fined by the original author.

FORMAT OF PROPOSAL
INTRODUCTION

• The aims of this proposal are to...

• This proposal evaluates....
• This proposal is intended to present the...

CURRENT SITUATION

• Many students/local residents/pensioners/members of the local

community have commented that...
• There is a strong feeling among all concerned that...
• Following a survey of local residents it was found that...
SUGGESTIONS

• It is recommended that...
• There should be...
• It would be advantageous to...

FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS

• If the above suggestions are implemented there would be...

• Unless the recommendations are taken seriously, it is unlikely that...
• Implementation of the above ideas would result in.

RELATED WORDS AND PHRASES

Agreement
- A great number of people share the view that tourism will have a negative impact
on the island.
- Today there is general / widespread agreement that pollution from cars and planes
is threatening the future of our planet.
- It is now widely accepted that the universe began with the so-called 'big bang'.
Disagreement
- Opinions differ about the proper relationship between the mass media and society.
- There is considerable disagreement among experts about the usefulness of these
tests.
- There has been a great deal of controversy over abortion in the US.
Advantages and disadvantages
- Regular exercise has many benefits, including reducing the risk of heart disease.
- Despite a few problems with the design, the car's advantages clearly outweigh its
disadvantages.
- The major drawback of this method is that it can be very time-consuming.
- The downside of running your own business is that you are responsible if anything
goes wrong.
Cause
- lead to: The research could lead to a cure for many serious illnesses.
- result in: The fire resulted in damage to their property.
- be responsible for: He was responsible for the accident.
- bring about:The war brought about enormous social change.
- give rise to: Poor performance in exams can give rise to depression and even
thoughts of suicide.
Effect
- impact on: His work has had an enormous impact on the study of genetics.
- influence on: In his book, he examines the influence of the media on our society.
- affect: (v) The disease affects women more than men.
- influence: (v) She has influenced him a lot.
- implications: The results of the study could have important implications for future
educational policy.
Problems
- issue: Issue is used especially about problems that affect a lot of people in society:
International terrorism is the biggest issue (=the most important issue) facing the
world today. Previous governments failed to address (=try to deal with) social issues
such as unemployment and homelessness.
- challenge: something difficult that you must do or deal with, which needs a lot of
skill, effort, and determination: She said she was looking forward to the challenge
of starting up a new business on her own.
- difficulty: The company has managed to overcome (=deal with) its recent financial
difficulties. Many people experience difficulty in sleeping at some time in their lives.
- trouble: a problem or several problems that make something difficult, spoil your
plans etc: Students of English often have trouble with phrasal verbs. The company
ran into trouble (=started to have problems) when it tried to expand too quickly.