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1. | How to Select a Meeting Facilitator Meeting facilitation is a complex activity. Thus, you want to make sure that you engage someone who knows how to help you get results. Here's what to look for.
1) Is the person a professional facilitator?
There is more to facilitation than ...
[Added: 14 Jul 2006 Hits: 303 Words: 552]
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2. | Why Olivia Refuses to Attend Meetings Olivia Felini is a wonderful cat. She will do almost anything, except go to meetings. Here's why.
1) No one asks her to participate.
Olivia always comes prepared to be part of the action. ...
[Added: 14 Jul 2006 Hits: 315 Words: 347]
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3. | How Bad Can a Meeting Be? There are the winning entries from a bad meeting contest (condensed and sanitized to protect the participants)
1) Short, Expensive, and Useless.
First, she sent a letter to a prospective client in New York, proposing a meeting. Then she phoned ...
[Added: 14 Jul 2006 Hits: 323 Words: 736]
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4. | More Than One Type of Goal Leads to Success Most people set goals. But they often set only one type of goal, and in so doing they set themselves up for failure.
Here is the complete tool kit. Use it to create success.
1) Achievement goals - These ...
[Added: 13 Jul 2006 Hits: 302 Words: 355]
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5. | The Secret to Effective Leadership Treating people with respect wins trust and develops lasting relationships. Here's what to do.
1) Be on time. In fact, arrive early for appointments and meetings. Plan time milestones in your daily schedule that ...
[Added: 13 Jul 2006 Hits: 351 Words: 353]
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6. | How to Survive in a Crazy World Everything seems to go faster, leaving everyone feeling overworked, overloaded, and overwhelmed. Here's how to survive.
1) Know Your Purpose.
Know your vision, your goals, and your plans because these help you set priorities. Each day, ...
[Added: 13 Jul 2006 Hits: 335 Words: 366]
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7. | Conquer Your Fear of Speaking Reduce your fear of speaking by taking the following steps.
1) Conduct Research.
Visit or call key participants to ask them what they expect from your presentation. That is, what do they want to ...
[Added: 13 Jul 2006 Hits: 311 Words: 347]
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8. | 3 Ways to Ruin a Presentation (and What to Do Instead) Memorable disasters don't just happen. They require a special blend of misunderstanding and misguided effort. Here are three ways to guarantee a disaster in your next presentation, and how to avoid them.
Mistake #1: Believe in Magic
Show up hoping that a coherent, eloquent, ...
[Added: 13 Jul 2006 Hits: 281 Words: 361]
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9. | Positive Communication Strategies Positive, effective communication is the key to success in every part of your life. That includes at work, at play, and at home.
Use these six strategies to communicate effectively.
1) People judge others by their actions. This means you are being judged ...
[Added: 26 Sep 2005 Hits: 2290 Words: 337]
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10. | How to Deal With Rejection No one likes rejection. And yet it happens. Here's how to make the most of it.
> Accept It
Recognize that it is impossible for everyone to say "yes" to everything. Thus, rejection is an ...
[Added: 26 Sep 2005 Hits: 225 Words: 457]
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11. | How Leaders Say "No" We all wish we could say "yes" to everybody and everything. And yet sometimes we have to say "no."
Recognize that being able to say "no" with dignity is a primary communication skill.
Here's how to say "no" with class and ...
[Added: 26 Sep 2005 Hits: 214 Words: 812]
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12. | How Effective Are Your Communication Skills Use this check list to assess your communication skills.
Focus
* Do you pay complete attention to others when they are speaking? (A wandering focus discourages open communication.)
* Do you manage your thoughts during a conversation, focusing them on understanding what the other ...
[Added: 26 Sep 2005 Hits: 223 Words: 444]
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13. | 6 Steps to Effective Communication Effective leaders are known for being excellent communicators. Here's what to do.
1) Avoid "Not." Negative talk encourages arguments, counter attacks, and attempts to solve your problems. It also creates a negative impression. For example, when you say, "I can't," you appear helpless and ineffective. Instead, talk about what ...
[Added: 26 Sep 2005 Hits: 263 Words: 404]
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14. | Voice Mail Tips If you are like most business people, voice mail has both simplified and complicated your life. On the good side, it helps you exchange information. On the other side, leaving messages can seem like putting notes in bottles that drift off ...
[Added: 26 Sep 2005 Hits: 209 Words: 442]
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15. | How to Use Your Voice Mail Your outgoing voice mail message tells a lot about you. In fact, it may be the first impression that you make with a new client. Here's how to appear successful.
1) Present a Positive Image
Your outgoing voice mail message should be simple, positive, and professional. State your ...
[Added: 26 Sep 2005 Hits: 211 Words: 375]
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16. | 10 Attributes of Effective Meetings Here are ten fundamental concepts that characterize an effective meeting.
Definition: A meeting is a business activity where select people gather to perform work that requires a team effort.
A meeting, like any business event, succeeds when it is preceded ...
[Added: 20 May 2005 Hits: 201 Words: 222]
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17. | What You Don't Want to Know About Bad Meetings Bad meetings are a cultural illness that senior executives pass on to new employees.
Long pointless meetings are useful in that they keep incompetent people from interfering with those who are working.
An employee who needs ...
[Added: 20 May 2005 Hits: 211 Words: 242]
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18. | Come Home Rich - How to Get the Most out of Your Next Conference Success in your career depends upon how well you manage your professional development. A prime source of this development comes from being a member of a professional association that relates to your career. As a ...
[Added: 20 May 2005 Hits: 226 Words: 930]
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19. | Unexpected Wisdom If you have ever traveled across country by train, you know that meals are served with community seating. That means you can meet new people with every meal.
In late March I took the train home (to Southern California) from an ...
[Added: 20 May 2005 Hits: 198 Words: 553]
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20. | How to Deal With Salespeople If you're an executive, you may sometimes feel like a open jelly sandwich at a picnic. Every crazy critter in the world wants to bite into your budget. Here's how to protect your time and ...
[Added: 20 May 2005 Hits: 203 Words: 595]
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21. | How to Save Money on Training 1) Use a live instructor. Adults learn best by doing, practicing, and experiencing. Effective instructors customize their programs to meet people’s needs, provide counsel on individual challenges, and respond to questions. Videos, CDs, and E-learning ...
[Added: 20 May 2005 Hits: 196 Words: 307]
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22. | Why Training Fails Sometimes when I conduct my workshop on Effective Meetings, one of the participants will ask, "Where's my boss?"
And I say, "Your boss claimed to be an expert on holding effective meetings."
Then the person ...
[Added: 10 May 2005 Hits: 227 Words: 517]
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23. | Why Would Anyone Hold a Bad Meeting? Pssst, want a stock tip that will make you rich? Okay, here it is: phone a public corporation and ask to speak with the CEO.
If a secretary tells you that the CEO expects to be busy in meetings for the next six hundred years, call your broker ...
[Added: 10 May 2005 Hits: 209 Words: 815]
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24. | Another Use for Meetings Every meeting is a laboratory where you can observe and learn important things about the people who attend. In fact, you can use meetings to identify people who merit being promoted into leadership positions. Watch ...
[Added: 10 May 2005 Hits: 184 Words: 485]
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25. | How to Hold Effective Staff Meetings Many people believe that they conduct effective meetings, when all they really do is host a party filled with official sounding chit chat. Or worse, they deliver a monologue that bores everyone. In either case, their meetings produce little.
Here's how to hold ...
[Added: 10 May 2005 Hits: 275 Words: 477]
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26. | Quick Quiz - Measure Your Meeting Mastery Here’s an easy quiz to check the health of your meetings.
1) Who leads your meetings? -- a) No one, b) Whoever has the loudest voice, c) A facilitator
2) What happens to the ideas in your meetings? -- a) If we had to ...
[Added: 10 May 2005 Hits: 194 Words: 366]
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27. | Why Would Anyone Do That in My Meeting? Imagine that you open a meeting by saying, "We need to talk about the budget."
And someone says, "I named my dog Budget because he's too big."
After the laughter subsides, you wonder why anyone would make such a silly remark in your meeting.
And ...
[Added: 10 May 2005 Hits: 179 Words: 704]
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28. | How Leaders Create Trust People buy from you, offer help, and grant rewards based on trust. Here are ways to increase your success by creating trust. While we do most of these things, missing even one of them can ruin it all.
Be Dependable
* Deliver what you promise and promise only what ...
[Added: 10 May 2005 Hits: 217 Words: 296]
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29. | Blueprint for Leadership - How to Be a Better Leader If you were to build a house, you would begin with a blueprint. This blueprint proves useful because it contains more than directions on how to build a house. It also describes the finished house. ...
[Added: 10 May 2005 Hits: 225 Words: 388]
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30. | Job Search Tips - How to Increase Your Success Finding a job can be a painful and difficult experience. Here are three things that you can do to minimize the pain and increase your chances of success.
1) Approach finding a job as if it were a full-time job, because it is.
Consider this: if you had a ...
[Added: 10 May 2005 Hits: 291 Words: 558]
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31. | Quick Tip - Effective Meetings Have a Complete Agenda Most agendas for a meeting look like this.
* Budget
* Payroll
* Staff
* Sales
* Vutszxtn
Some people would tell me, "That's a perfectly good agenda. I know what all of those things mean, except, uh, ...
[Added: 10 May 2005 Hits: 231 Words: 251]
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32. | Quick Tip - Effective Meetings Begin With a Goal Goals are critically important for the success of a meeting. You must know what you want so you can ask for it. And the participants need to know what you want so they can help you get it. Without goals, a meeting becomes a ...
[Added: 10 May 2005 Hits: 223 Words: 305]
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33. | Quick Tip - Effective Meetings Have SMART Goals The first step in planning an agenda is to identify the goals for the meeting. Properly done, goals have five S M A R T characteristics. They are:
Specific. The goal must tell exactly what ...
[Added: 10 May 2005 Hits: 213 Words: 259]
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34. | Quick Tip - Effective Meetings Earn a Profit Most people treat meetings as a free resource that can be used to deal with any issue. As a result, huge amounts of time and money are wasted on trivia.
A meeting is ...
[Added: 10 May 2005 Hits: 215 Words: 277]
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35. | Managing Monsters in Meetings - Part 1, General Strategies for Unproductive Behavior It happens easily. You're conducting a meeting and suddenly a small side meeting starts. Then someone introduces an unrelated issue. Someone else ridicules the new issue. Everyone laughs, except the person who mentioned the idea. Then someone insults the person who told the joke. Two people stand up and walk ...
[Added: 28 Apr 2005 Hits: 203 Words: 602]
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36. | Managing Monsters in Meetings - Part 2, Multiple Conversations Side conversations ruin meetings by destroying focus and fragmenting participation.
Approach 1: Ask for cooperation
Start by asking everyone to cooperate. Look at the middle of the group (instead of at the talker) and ...
[Added: 28 Apr 2005 Hits: 193 Words: 320]
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37. | Managing Monsters in Meetings - Part 3, Drifting From the Topic Although new ideas lead to creative solutions, they can be a challenge when they interrupt or distract the work on an issue.
Approach 1: Question the relationship to topic
When new ideas seem inappropriate, say:
"That's ...
[Added: 28 Apr 2005 Hits: 187 Words: 307]
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38. | Managing Monsters in Meetings - Part 4, Quiet Participants There are many reasons why someone would decline to participate during a meeting. While some of these may be valid, others may warrant intervention in order to hold an effective meeting.
An effective meeting ...
[Added: 28 Apr 2005 Hits: 201 Words: 232]
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39. | Managing Monsters in Meetings - Part 5, Dominant Participants While dominant participants contribute significantly to the success of a meeting, they can also overwhelm, intimidate, and exclude others. Thus, you want to control their energy without losing their support.
Approach 1: Ask others to contribute
Asking quiet participants to contribute indirectly moderates the more dominant ...
[Added: 28 Apr 2005 Hits: 222 Words: 548]
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40. | Managing Monsters in Meetings - Part 6, Deadlocked Discussions Although a meeting is a vehicle for resolving differences, it can break down when the participants become mired in a disagreement.
Approach 1: Form a subcommittee
Ask for volunteers from the opposing viewpoints to form a subcommittee to resolve the issue. This is a useful approach, because: ...
[Added: 28 Apr 2005 Hits: 185 Words: 263]
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41. | Managing Monsters in Meetings - Part 7, Personal Attacks Personal attacks hurt people, mar communication, and end creativity. If they become part of a meeting's culture, they drive the participants into making safe and perhaps useless contributions.
Approach 1: Speak to the group
Set the stage ...
[Added: 28 Apr 2005 Hits: 217 Words: 545]
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42. | What to Ask When You're Invited to a Meeting Here are five questions that you must ask before agreeing to attend a meeting.
1) Where is the agenda? A meeting without an agenda is like a journey without a map; it will always waste your time. Once ...
[Added: 19 Apr 2005 Hits: 193 Words: 277]
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43. | Effective Meetings by Phone - Part 2, How to Hold a Teleconference Even a well-planned teleconference can go poorly. Some people treat any meeting as a casual social activity instead of as a serious business project. And a teleconference brings special challenges because people attend them in the privacy of their office without being able to see ...
[Added: 11 Apr 2005 Hits: 197 Words: 683]
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44. | Effective Meetings by Phone - Part 1, How to Plan a Teleconference Teleconferences can be a boon or a bust. On the positive side, they allow people at different locations to attend meetings without having to travel. On the negative side, they can degenerate into frustrating struggles with uncontrolled babble. ...
[Added: 11 Apr 2005 Hits: 229 Words: 545]
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45. | Effective Meetings Begin With a Real Agenda Everyone knows that an agenda is the key to an effective meeting. But an agenda that consists of a list of nouns, such as budget, software, and picnic, is useless. Here’s how to prepare a real agenda that puts you in control of the meeting.
1) ...
[Added: 05 Apr 2005 Hits: 215 Words: 296]
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46. | Ten Tips for Effective Meetings Here are ten things that you can do to hold more effective meetings.
1) Avoid meetings. Test the importance of a meeting by asking, "What happens without it?" If your answer is, "Nothing," then don't call the meeting.
2) Prepare goals. These ...
[Added: 29 Mar 2005 Hits: 185 Words: 465]
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47. | 7 Myths That Make Meetings Miserable Myth 1: Executives belong in meetings.
Although the demands of business cause executives to attend more meetings than other professionals, executives need to avoid meetings. Top management is responsible for vision, strategy, plans, and communication. That means executives should spend most of their time thinking, learning, ...
[Added: 23 Mar 2005 Hits: 181 Words: 596]
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