How many of us have had the unpleasant experience of being forced to sit through a meeting that feels like a complete waste of time? Or been in the position of having to run that meeting, and helplessly lost control of a discussion or agenda? Or wondered if you walked into the room conference room when a “participation mandatory” invitation brought you to a wooden, one-way presentation? These situations happen all too frequently: meetings are perhaps the worst part of working in certain places. But this terrific book, Dealing with Meetings You Can’t Stand: Meet Less and Do More (McGraw Hill, 2017), can help. I’d love to see it on everyone’s bookcase, to be honest.
Dealing with Meetings is by Dr. Rick Brinkman, an expert on workplace communication and difficult personalities. Like his previous book — Dealing with People You Can’t Stand — it’s humorous and practical, light in tone and filled with tips. People is an international top seller and has been translated in 25 languages. By the looks of it, Meetings has the goods to follow in its footsteps — including a hilariously apt quote by Dave Barry at the beginning: “If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.'” By setting the reader up with a chuckle and not a groan, the author makes us feel instantly more optimistic about improving dysfunctional conference calls, near-silent roundtable discussions, metronomic powerpoints and the like. It’s not an accident: Brinkman is an expert at the psychology behind how we behave why we do.
All problems with meetings fall into four categories, he asserts... READ MORE RECOMMENDED