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Improving Meetings

Various methods can be used to improve meetings, and they include such issues such as having a purpose, stipulating the meeting agenda, encouraging participation, taking minutes as well as the use of technology (Cogan). It is always significant to have a purpose for a meeting and at the same time essential to notify all the attendants making them aware of the reason the meeting is being conducted. Having a purpose for the meeting will help keep the attendants of the meeting engaged, setting a productive atmosphere for the whole meeting. Having an agenda is the other method that can help improve the meetings, and the reason behind is that is that the agenda will provide the speaker with a rough idea of how much time they can allocate to each of the agendas in the list, and this greatly helps in saving time due to effective timing.

Encouraging participation as well is essential in meetings as it makes the meeting interactive with everyone feeling not left out. Taking minutes of every meeting is of great significance as it is an indication as well as a record of what has been discussed as well as what has been passed in the meeting. The minutes helps in setting the agenda for the next meeting and therefore becomes an essential requirement in meetings. Technology cannot be left behind as a meeting needs to be reinforced with other aids such as charts and diagrams to explain various concepts of the meeting. Use of projectors and computers can be of significance in storage as well as preparation for the presentation.

Groupthink refers to a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of individuals through which the urge for harmony and conformity in the group tend to result in an irrational decision-making result (Hassan). The various reasons for groupthink include: the group being much cohesive, a few options are considered in the group, bias or critic from the information arriving from the outside, stress due to time pressure as well as group domination by a very directive leader. Groupthink, therefore, occurs if individuals in the group despite being well-intentioned end up making decisions that represent all the participants so that they can be summarized as one for conformity purposes. The various ways to avoid groupthink include planning, encouraging debate and participation, looking for different personalities, reaching out, avoid rushing in decision making as well as acknowledging bias in data. Remaining an impartial leader as well can help reduce groupthink.

Work Cited

Cogan, Elaine. Successful public meetings: A practical guide. Routledge, 2018.

Hassan, Golkar. “Groupthink principles and fundamentals in organizations.” Interdisciplinary journal of contemporary research in business 5.8 (2013): 225-240.