16.7 End of Chapter Activities
16a. Thinking About the Content
What are your key takeaways from this chapter? What is something you have learned or something you would like to add from your experience?
16b. Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions
- Have you ever facilitated a meeting?
- Have you ever participated in a meeting you thought was not well organized? What could the organizer have done differently to facilitate a better meeting?
- Make an audio recording of your voice and listen to it. Are there aspects of your voice quality, pronunciation, or delivery style that you would like to improve?
16c. Applying chapter concepts to a situation
Running Efficient Meetings
Jim is doing an internship at Green Tree Industries as part of his master’s degree. He has been hired as a supervisor, and one of his duties is to occasionally chair the team’s check-in meetings held every two weeks. These meetings typically start with life updates, which are limited to three minutes per person. Some employees adhere to the three-minute limit, while others overshare and spend up to fifteen minutes sharing their life update.
The total duration of these meetings is an hour. However, the team isn’t always able to address all agenda items because the life updates last longer than they should. This results in the team going back and forth over emails to discuss the missed agenda items.
Jim is the chair of the team’s upcoming meeting and is preparing the agenda. In Jim’s opinion, the meetings are not efficient. Other employees have confided in him that they think the meetings are inefficient, too. Jim does not want to include the life updates on the agenda, but he knows many people like it.
Is there a way that Jim can accommodate the life updates while keeping them within the allotted time?
16d. Writing Activity
Read this article from the Harvard Business Review on How to Run a Meeting. Summarize the article. What are some additional tips not mentioned in this chapter? What is the most useful advice mentioned in this article?