The Secrets to Masterful Meetings Paperback – November 5, 2005

The is clearly THE playbook for holding effective meetings. It has always been curious to me that we expect people inherently know how to run a great meeting. There is a real skill to it and Wilkinson shows the way how.

Clear thoughts and actions to have more efficient, expedient and focused meetings with suggestions for monitoring and review.Easy to read and quickly understand.

Lots of good information on structuring and running a very disciplined meeting. Fails to address the most important purpose of a meeting which is to think better together. Would not work well for creative brainstorming.

too detailed for what I needed it for.

As a professor, many working students tell me that they have little time for their part-time studies because their job keeps them so busy. To help them improve, I ask each person to write down for two weeks how she or he spends time 24/7, including both work and personal time.Invariably, the person reports back that he or she spends 15-25 hours a week in meetings . . . and has to work late every night to get "regular" work done. After we spend some time looking into those meetings, students are usually able to reduce those hours to 5-10 a week. The remaining time then becomes available for their personal studies.So while you may think that your organization will be the big beneficiary if you lead and participate in better meetings, actually you will be the big winner. Your personal time will expand while your stress will decline.I've been a student of good meeting practices for over 35 years and am often hired to facilitate difficult meetings, such as strategy development sessions. In all of those years, I do not recall seeing a book that more effectively captures and explains the key practices that work than The Secrets of Masterful Meetings. Employing this book will give you helpful lessons that it would take you at least 20 years to learn on your own.My advice is to get this book, share it with everyone you work with and apply its excellent recommendations.Let me explain what this book contains.The book builds on the excellent principle that everyone has a stake in better meetings. Set rules and rights for better meetings, and everyone will benefit. What's more, everyone will help enforce helpful practices. The book opens with a list of rights that your organization might choose to employ for this purpose. The book ends with a process for turning this concept into reality.In between there's plenty of detailed, practical advice for those who lead . . . and those who find themselves in meetings with leaders who are making a mess of the meeting. Yes, you can lead from any chair in a meeting. It just takes tact. You ask questions rather than directing people.Most books on this subject are really good on the big points: Have an agenda, have meeting rules, focus on one conversation, involve everyone, etc. Why I liked The Secrets of Masterful Meetings so much was because Mr. Wilkinson goes into details about good ways to implement these practices . . . including elaborate examples built around the theme of improving meetings.But Mr. Wilkinson is more than just someone who writes about meetings. He obviously has facilitated very many good ones. The book is filled with practical advice on how to take notes, involve people and resolve conflicts. Even the most experienced facilitator will learn from some of these techniques.For new meeting leaders, I particularly commend to you the check lists which will help you avoid leaving something out that you need to do in preparing for, facilitating or following up on a meeting. In addition, chapter 8 is an advanced seminar on how to deal with troublemakers and awkward situations. The 15 examples are ones that you'll eventually run into. By reading these sections now, you'll avoid problems later.

As a Sales and marketing leader with a bit of a driver personality and objecitves to achieve I don't have alot of time to waste in what always felt like unproductive meetings. This all changed after reading through this book and attending a "Facilitation for Trainers" workshop at leadership strategies, Michael Wilkinson's company.I am now able to help meetings move to goal completion when they get bogged down. Additionally, I am now only attending meetings led by those that have either read this book or have attended a faciliation workshop with Michael Wilkinson.After employing the techniques in this book my productivity has increased dramatically as demonstrated to me by my meeting and exceeding my revenue objectives.Thanks for the tools they have helped me make more Money!

An excellent, accessible toolkit for anyone who leads meetings -- or attends them -- and wants their meetings to be the productive investments they are meant to be. Every manager should own a copy of this book, and give it to all of his/her direct reports.

Good, concise read. Great tidbits. Loved the meeting rights and responsibilities.