How to Protect Yourself from Meetings

You just checked your computer and (surprise) someone has scheduled you for a meeting.

Now what? You had planned to work on a project - and this meeting promises to be a repeat of the last one, which was a long painful discussion of unrelated ideas, stories, and complaints.

Instead of just showing up, you could:

1) Be busy.

Fill your calendar with activities that relate to your job. For example, you could schedule an all-day meeting tomorrow (with yourself) to finish the report that is due next week. Or, you could schedule a trip (to the library) to read articles on new technologies. Or, you could schedule meetings (essential conversations) with team members to learn about their needs so that you can manage resources.

Now you have an excuse to miss bad meetings. You can say, "I have a conflict."

2) Be curious.

Ask questions to determine if attending the meeting is a good use of your time. For example, you could ask:

"What is your goal for the meeting?"

"What is your agenda for the meeting?"

"What is my role in the meeting?"

Certainly your time is too valuable to waste in pointless, unplanned, useless meetings. In such cases, use decline the invitation or offer to help.

3) Be helpful.

If you're invited to a meeting about an important issue and there is no agenda, offer to prepare one.

This gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your leadership and organizational skills. It also helps accomplish tasks that are needed for your business.

If you are too busy to help, then hire a facilitator who will take care of the entire process.

And, if appropriate, you can offer to take charge of a meeting that has lost its way. Of course, this will depend upon the goal, the group, and your knowledge of process tools.

4) Be constructive (bonus idea)

Instead of coping with bad meetings, schedule a workshop that shows your staff how to hold effective meetings. Learn more about meetings at: http://www.squidoo.com/OneGreatMeeting

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Will You Be a Good Manager? Test Yourself

Manager means to manage any work or an organization. To manage is not that easy. Imagine the size of some of the large organizations. Their turnover exceeds GDP of many countries. But the companies have to be managed effectively and efficiently and good managers are needed to do that. It applies to self-run businesses. If you don't know how to manage your business, it will suffer. How to test yourself and know if you are a good manager or whether you have the qualities to become a good manager? Let us find out.

What are the qualities of a good manager? Let us summarize. To know the goal of the organization and to achieve those goals with minimum resources and maximum effectiveness is the first goal of any manager. If the primary goal of your company right now is to increase sales, irrespective of profits, you have to do that with given resources. If the goal is to increase profits, you have to do that by cutting costs, improving sales, raising prices, and improving employee effectiveness and raise profits.

The quality that is most important for a good manager is skill and knowledge. Unless a manger has skill to perform a job, nothing will work. The second important quality is focus. A manager should be focused to the goal of the company and his/her every action should go in that direction. All such sub skills as Time management, Human resources management, Marketing, Production and purchases are part of the larger goal. Each of these has to be made more effective and efficient.

One important factor that at times overrides all others is vision. What is the vision of the manager about the organization? How does the manager look at the future and what is larger game plan? These are very important to formulate policies, which will satisfy the goals of the organization. No organization is static. It is a dynamic mix of many forces that has to be managed to move in a single direction. The test of a manger lies in doing this. Test yourself against all these requirements and find out the strengths and weaknesses. Once you know your weaknesses, you can work upon them and improve your performance. Try some quizzes from the Internet on Business & Career and try answering them. The tests will help you greatly in finding out more about yourself.

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