Structure And Conduct Of Formal And Informal Meetings – Tips And Techniques

Answer 1

1. Quorum: Minimum number of members of a chosen assembly that need to be present for conducting the business legally (Williams 2017).
2. Procedural motion: Motion in the business that acts according to the procedures that need to be followed in a meeting (Kaufmann 2016).
3. Proxy: A person having written authorization from another member who is absent in the meeting to cast a vote on his behalf (Fos and Tsoutsoura 2014).
4. Conflict of interest: A situation, where an individual, group or organization are engaged in multiple interests that may create a conflict with the original interest of the organization (McCaghy et al. 2016).

Meeting structure for a formal meeting

Formal meeting refers to the pre-planned get together of more than one individual to achieve a common objective through verbal communication. The structure of formal meeting is:

Figure 1: Structure of formal meeting

(Source: Lauring and Klitmøller 2015)

A meeting which is not planned and less regulated and lack of formalities, such as, agenda, chairperson and minutes. The structure includes impromptu and ad hoc actions and the type can be one-to-one, within a group or informational meeting.

Figure 2: Structure of informal meeting

(Source: Lauring and Klitmøller 2015)

Three key arrangements that need to be made for a meeting:

• Location
• Participants
• Agenda (Brigham and Kavanagh 2015)

Two responsibilities of a Chairperson prior to a meeting

• Setting the agenda
• Setting rules for regulating the meeting (Assessment 2016)

Three important aspects of a Chairperson’s job during a meeting

• Ensuring that the participants stick to the agenda of the meeting
• Ensuring that all the participants express their views and those are discussed
• Decisions are made and ensuring that the decisions are accepted by all the participants (Brigham and Kavanagh 2015)

The Chairperson is responsible for effective run of a meeting. That involves the participants sticking to the agenda of the meeting, and every one speaking about his own views. The Chairperson must monitor the performances of the participants to see that everyone is expressing their views and those are heard by the others before reaching to a conclusion. If a participant is not familiar with the formal meeting structure, the chairperson must identify that person by monitoring his behavior and take measures to make him feel comfortable to express his opinions.

To manage the dominating person in a meeting, the Chairperson can:

• Accept his views and also provide opportunities to others for speaking up.
• Acknowledge the view of that person with body language only and nonverbal gestures, discouraging him to speak further
• Call other people by names to involve him
• Playing traffic cop with hand and verbal gestures to show the authority (Mueller 2015)

To involve a shy person in the meeting, the Chairperson can:

• Call out his name for sharing views and feedbacks
• Show gratitude
• Highlight the risk of being shy
• Encourage them to take training on public speaking (Mueller 2015)

To manage two people having conversation within a meeting, the Chairperson can:

• Call out their names and ask them to share their discussion with everyone in the meeting

Two ways of conducting meeting:

1. Formal meeting
2. Informal meeting

Three advantages of face-to face meeting:

1. Communication through body language
2. Clarification of meanings
3. Encouragement for participation.

When the employees lack motivational spirit and their productivity is getting hampered, the face to face meeting is the best measure to resolve the issues (Boden et al. 2014).

Three advantages of teleconference or web conferencing:

1. Addressing a global workforce becomes easier
2. Saves time and travel expenditures
3. Efficient system for record keeping

When an organization wants to address its huge employee base spread across the globe and within a short time, teleconferencing or web conference is the most suitable measure (Denoue et al. 2014).

Webcams, that is, web cameras, is a digital camera which sends live picture when it is connected with the computer and internet. Webcams are very useful for video conferencing. The users have to plug in the camera with the computer and install a video-calling software, such as, Skype. They must have internet connection. After that they need to create a login in the software and make video calls to those with whom the video conferencing is required (D. Olson et al. 2014).

Answer 2

Purpose of agenda:

• Notice of meeting
• List of topics
• Prioritizing discussion topics
• Briefing to the participants
• Limits unnecessary discussions (Jones and Dexter 2014)

5 items to be included in agenda:

• Key objectives
• Input
• Format
• Timeline
• Follow-up section

Purpose of meeting minutes is to summarize the points discussed in the meeting and the conclusion or decisions made on those.

5 items to be included in meeting minutes:

• Headings and attendees
• Action items
• Approval of previous actions
• Announcements
• Next meeting (Chatalalsingh and Reeves 2014)

In formal meetings, the minutes should comprise of formal language and proper sentences summarizing the discussion and decisions taken in the meeting. In the informal meeting, the term ‘minutes’ is not used. People take notes on the discussion and decision made using short points and sometimes not in proper sentences or structure (Lauring and Klitmøller 2015).

1. Notice of meeting should be provided to the attendees, Chairperson, and organizers of venue and equipment.
2. Notice can be provided prior to the meeting either through emails to the attendees or by putting up a general intimation on the notice board.

Grow Management Consultants

Leadership Conference 2018: Leading in the twenty first century

Meeting Agenda

Date: January 28, 2018

Time: 11.00 A.M. – 11.30 A.M.

Attendees: Administration Project Officer,

     Bob Downs, Senior Management Consultant

     Jack Steel, Marketing Manager

Meeting Policy and Procedures: The meeting will be held for the benefit of Grow Management Consultants on the latest leadership trends in the business. The meeting will meet all the legal requirement of the company and follow good business practice. The organizational requirements include the improvement in the leadership skills of the leaders in the company.

Topics to be discussed: Performance Management, Improvement of Employee Experience, People Analytics and Digital HR Techniques

In the modern organizational culture, the companies focus on new techniques for monitoring the performance of the employees and improving the employee experience by integrating the culture and diversities. The new trend of using digital techniques for HR operations and people analytics are also becoming popular for their effectiveness. Grow Management also needs to enhance these areas for the benefit of the employees as well as for the organization.

Grow Management Consultants is going to arrange a meeting on March 25, 2018 on the upcoming program on ‘Leadership Conference for Grow Management Consultants’. The Attendees would be the Operation Manager, Administration Project Officer, Senior Management Consultant and Marketing Manager. The meeting will be held in the Conference Room. The requirement for the meeting are the laptops, MS Office tools, Internet access, Meeting policy and procedures, Meeting Agenda, Draft Conference Program, Meeting Minutes Template and Participants. In the meeting, the topics for conference and venue and food arrangements will be discussed. After the meeting, the draft summary and minutes of meeting will be sent to you.

Grow Management Consultants

Activities to implement work-life balance polices

Date: March 20, 2018

Time: 5.00 P.M. – 5.15 P.M.

Attendees: Staff of all departments

Operation Manager

Meeting structure for a formal meeting

Sally Smith, Administration Project officer

Bob Downs, Senior Management Consultant

Jack Steel, Marketing Manager

Topic: The list of activities that would be implemented for recreation of the employees.

This meeting will be held to discuss on the activities that can help in improving the work life balance of the employees. The type, time and venue of the activities will be discussed with all the attendees to get their viewpoints. They are welcome to put forward their suggestions and raise any concerning issue. All the activities should not violate any rules of the organization.

Grow Management Consultants is going to arrange a meeting on March 20, 2018, from 5 PM to 5.15 PM, to discuss on the latest implementation on the program on ‘Work-Life Balance Policies’. The Attendees would be the staff of all the departments. The meeting will be held in the common area. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss about the activities that would help to improve the work life balance of the employees. For example, arranging games for 30 minutes once in every week can help to reduce the monotony of the work. The employees are welcome to provide with suggestions for activities and when and what time those would be conducted. The summary of the meeting would be sent to all after the meeting.

References

Assessment, E.I., 2016. Managing Allegations Against Staff Policy and Procedures. Policy.

Boden, A., Rosswog, F., Stevens, G. and Wulf, V., 2014, February. Articulation spaces: bridging the gap between formal and informal coordination. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing (pp. 1120-1130). ACM.

Brigham, M. and Kavanagh, D., 2015, July. The Sense of the Meeting: Silent Organization. In 31st EGOS Colloquium: Sub-theme 16: Organization as Communication: The Performative Power of Talk, Athens, Greece, 2-4 July 2015.

Chatalalsingh, C. and Reeves, S., 2014. Leading team learning: what makes interprofessional teams learn to work well?. Journal of interprofessional care, 28(6), pp.513-518.

Olson, J., D. Appunn, F., A. McAllister, C., K. Walters, K. and Grinnell, L., 2014. Webcams and virtual teams: an impact model. Team PerformanceManagement, 20(3/4), pp.148-177.

Denoue, L., Carter, S., Girgensohn, A. and Cooper, M., 2014, September. Building digital project rooms for web meetings. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM symposium on Document engineering (pp. 135-138). ACM.

Fos, V. and Tsoutsoura, M., 2014. Shareholder democracy in play: Career consequences of proxy contests. Journal of Financial Economics, 114(2), pp.316-340.

Jones, W.M. and Dexter, S., 2014. How teachers learn: the roles of formal, informal, and independent learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 62(3), pp.367-384.

Kaufmann, J., 2016. Conference diplomacy: An introductory analysis. Springer.

Lauring, J. and Klitmøller, A., 2015. Corporate language-based communication avoidance in MNCs: A multi-sited ethnography approach. Journal of World Business, 50(1), pp.46-55.

McCaghy, C.H., Capron, T.A., Jamieson, J.D. and Carey, S.H.H., 2016. Deviant behavior: Crime, conflict, and interest groups. Routledge.

Mueller, J., 2015. Formal and informal practices of knowledge sharing between project teams and enacted cultural characteristics. Project Management Journal, 46(1), pp.53-68.

Williams, P., 2017. Strategies for inhibiting quorum sensing. Emerging Topics in Life Sciences, p.ETLS20160021.