More Time to Meet
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Meetings: a necessary evil, or the time of our lives?
- Can we make meetings effective, creative and enjoyable times to spend together?
- If it’s a business meeting - is there a contradiction in terms here?
- Is it possible that everyone present enjoys the meeting?
What follows is inspired by Nancy Kline’s “More Time to Think: The Power of Independent Thinking” (Cassell, London, 2015). In particular by chapter 48, “What does it take to save a life?”
Nancy believes with great conviction that we are all creative beings. Given the right conditions, this creativity can emerge in our work lives, our home lives and our communities. We can solve problems, take new initiatives, get “unstuck”, and make all kinds of positive contributions.
However, most of the time these conditions are only partially present – and much of our potential goes unrealised. Meetings are a good case in point. As often as not, they are frustrating experiences for most of us, seemingly achieving relatively little; and demanding a lot of time that we’d really prefer to spend doing something else. Perhaps the person chairing feels it has been a good meeting – but does anyone else?
Nancy has coached teams in businesses and communities in developing high quality meetings. The key ingredients are coming up in a minute. First, let’s take a look at these conditions which encourage us to be creative. There are ten of them identified in Nancy’s “Thinking Environment” ®1 work.
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Full content available in above attached pdf file.