Learn how to make meetings shorter, more effective, and more satisfying to everyone in attendance! In most workplaces today, meetings have become dreaded, meaningless, and at best, a necessary evil. Neither should be acceptable to management. All meetings should be powerful tools for solving problems, making decisions, exchanging ideas, and getting results fast. What is the secret to turning pointless into production? Based on years of experience consulting for companies around the world, Brian Tracy has learned firsthand what works in meetings and what doesn’t. In Meetings That Get Results, Tracy will help you learn how to: Structure different types of meetings Establish meeting priorities Set an achievable agenda Summarize discussion points and decisions Gain agreement on action steps, assign responsibility, and set deadlines Maximize the return on time invested, and much more! When you are leading a meeting, both your superiors and your subordinates are assessing your performance. This invaluable pocket-sized guide reveals simple, proven ideas for managers and other leaders to impress your coworkers with your improved skills. Meetings That Get Results shows you how to use structure, purpose, presentations, and more to make your performances more effective and compelling.

This practical, comprehensive guide to designing and running more effective meetings will result in less time wasted, more collaborative decision-making, and measurably improved business outcomes. There's nothing more frustrating than an unproductive meeting—except when it leads to another unproductive meeting. Yet every day millions of people conduct meetings—in person or online—without the critical understanding or formal training on how to plan and lead them effectively. This book offers a structured method to ensure that meetings will produce clear and actionable results. Meetings that are profitable and productive ultimately lead to fewer meetings. This book offers leaders a significant edge by • Empowering readers to help their groups create, innovate, and break through the barriers of miscommunication, politics, and intolerance • Making it easier for them to help others forge consensus and shared understanding • Providing them with proven agenda steps, tools, and detailed procedures Readers will learn how to resolve or manage common problems, inspire creativity, and transfer ownership to their meeting participants while managing interpersonal conflicts and other disruptions that arise. In a world of back-to-back meetings, this book explains the how-to details behind game-changing tools and techniques.

Meeting Excellence is a comprehensive resource that provides a wide range of ready-to-use tools that have been developed and tested by a meeting initiative within Novartis Pharmaceuticals. It is based on years of research observing team meetings, examining existing meeting documents, and conducting a number of intensive individual interviews in the U.S. and Europe. This important book offers the information and tools needed to prepare, facilitate, and follow up on all your meetings. Step by step, Meeting Excellence shows how to Create an action-focused meeting agenda Ensure that everyone participates in discussion Deal with disruptive and inattentive people Develop a climate of trust among meeting participants Create and deliver effective meeting presentations Stay on track to achieve your meeting goals Achieve clear communication during a multicultural meeting Liven up a dreary and unproductive meeting Close your meeting on an upbeat and positive note Get action on team action items Improve meeting communications with line management Evaluate your meeting quickly and effectively Choose among various web-based meeting tools

It seems these days that everyone hates meetings. How many times have you heard someone say, "We have too many meetings," or "I am booked so solid every day in meetings I never have time to get anything done," or "I'm back-to-back..." But when you talk to people, it isn't that they hate meetings; it's that they don't like meetings in which nothing gets done. No one is sure why the meeting was called, or why half the people are in the room, or what exactly is supposed to get done, or what was decided. We complain about meetings, but we seem to attend more and more of them. This book is for people who need to lead effective meetings, in any context. It is a blueprint for how to have your meetings work, defined as, meetings that achieve the results you want to achieve, in the meeting and afterwards. It's a how-to guide for using the time you spend planning, organizing and conducting meetings wisely. It's about getting results through meetings. Why are effective meetings important? Meeting quality matters. Well-run organizations have well-run meetings. Sloppily run organizations have sloppily run meetings. What are the signs of a bad meeting? The meeting starts late. There is no agenda. The meeting runs over. No one is sure what if anything was decided or accomplished. The same meeting to discuss the same topic seems to be held over and over again. No one knows what the next steps are or who is supposed to follow up whom for what. Someone monopolizes the meeting and someone else talks in circles, while yet someone else seems to simply rephrase and repeat what has already been said. Nothing discourages people, whether volunteers or employees, like feeling they are wasting their time. Too many meetings waste time. They sap morale, and leave people frustrated or irritated. This is a shame, as leading an effective meeting is not rocket science once you have a blueprint. If you have an allergic reaction to wasting time in meetings, this book is for you. It is divided into five principal sections: - Preparation - Invitation - Agenda - Delivery - Follow Up The sections outline the five phases of a meeting. For your meeting to be successful (again, defined as, a meeting that achieves the results you want to achieve), you must execute each phase successfully. Meetings versus Presentations The tips in this book are intended to apply to both meetings, in which various people interact in a more-or-less informal setting, and presentations, occasions on which a speaker presents material to an audience in a structured, more-or-less formal setting. Some principles apply more directly to meetings, others to presentations. All are relevant to both.

Use eye-popping visual tools to energize your people! Just as social networking has reclaimed the Internet for human interactivity and co-creation, the visual meetings movement is reclaiming creativity, productivity, and playful exchange for serious work in groups. Visual Meetings explains how anyone can implement powerful visual tools, and how these tools are being used in Silicon Valley and elsewhere to facilitate both face-to-face and virtual group work. This dynamic and richly illustrated resource gives meeting leaders, presenters, and consultants a slew of exciting tricks and tools, including Graphic recording, visual planning, story boarding, graphic templates, idea mapping, etc. Creative ways to energize team building, sales presentations, staff meetings, strategy sessions, brainstorming, and more Getting beyond paper and whiteboards to engage new media platforms Understanding emerging visual language for leading groups Unlocking formerly untapped creative resources for business success, Visual Meetings will help you and your team communicate ideas more effectively and engagingly.

Everybody hates meetings, right? Necessary, but boring, unproductive, and often a waste of time. In TPH's new series, Smarter in an Hour, Kimberly Devlin shows how to change that with her surefire PLANNER strategy to make planning productive meetings easy and effective. She also provides guidance on agendas, managing difficult behaviors, follow through, and action planning backed up with tools, templates, assessments, and more. No matter the size, purpose, or timing of your meetings, this book will be the best one-hour investment you can make to get results you want in your business and personal meetings.