People on Organization - Managing Team Meetings and Negotiations - Essay Example

Question 4 In ordinary settings, a meeting is a gathering or an assembly of people. Within organizations, a meeting is an official forum held between different stakeholders to deliberate on specific issues affecting the organization. During meetings, the stakeholders air their views, discus or negotiate to reach an amicable ground concerning the issues or topics raised. Effective meetings consider the importance of factors such as time agenda and the rules of engagement (Poncini 2007). In order to run effective meetings, planning and the initial face of the meeting has to be right. Before the actual date of the meeting, participants have to be selected appropriately. A meeting within an organization should not contain all the members of the organization but only the members that are affected or required to impact the meeting. The selection of members of a meeting will depend on the type of meeting. For instance, a meeting to negotiate terms and conditions of work between employer and employees does not necessarily require attendance of all the employees. Instead, members can be drawn from the membership of employee unions. This selection will limit the possibility of waste of time from irrelevant input and lack of concern in the meeting. Setting the objectives of the meeting or the agenda is another preparatory process. Here, the person or group that calls the meeting will develop a set of concerns that the meeting will address. The main consideration here is given to the type of meeting. If the meeting is to address a dispute, then the objectives are limited to the scope of a dispute of resolution and the stakeholders are duly informed. The agenda is then distributed to the stakeholders before the meeting to allow time for the stakeholders to gather high-quality information on the subject matter. It also gives the participants time to make their schedules comply with the timeframe of the meeting (Gamage 2006). Giving each stakeholder time for preparation sets the time for each member to gather the relevant information on the subject of the issue. The importance of this subject is already discussed that it makes the subject limit the preparation of the issues at hand. For distributive negotiations, this point is a special one. This is since it makes the preparing partners have a wide variety of their options. For integrated bargains, the process is not as useful as it engages the formal partners in a wit engagement that will engage in unproductive negotiations. A meeting should start at the stipulated time on and schedule. This demonstrates to the attendance that time is of great importance to the team or person that is leading the meeting. From a begin of a meeting, it is important to formulate the rules of engagement with all the members present. These include issues to deal with the amount of time allowed for each members contribution and the requirement that is needed of a member in terms of discipline. This process is always challenging as it involves the initial negotiation that sets the stage for the main activities and deliberations to be carried out in a meeting. The negotiation of the terms of engagement or the ground rules can drag for a longer time reducing the time left for the actual agenda of the meeting. To achieve optimal results in the setting the initial rules, the person leading the meeting should have strong negotiation skill. The understanding of the group that one is dealing with at this level is also important. At this stage, the negotiation on the matters at hand should be kept shorts and concise so as to avoid overshadowing the main activities to be covered in the meeting. To achieve this, negotiation principles should be adeptly applied to the situation. The meeting controller ought to find a common ground for all the members of the meeting before the start in the shortest time possible. This common ground can be achieved through the use of power in the meeting to gain leverage. This can also be implemented by use of threats in order to save time (Henkel 2007). The meeting should be controlled procedurally with the rules that were set at the beginning properly followed by the participants. Discipline should be observed during the meeting to ensure optimality of the use of time. In meetings where decisions have to be reached by the members, there is an importance in setting the criteria of breaking the impasse. Other measures include ways of avoiding distraction of attention within the premise of the meeting. This includes issues like the use of telecommunication devices within the venue of the meeting. Meetings have different purposes. I n the everyday organization, the purpose of the meetings held is either perform a negotiation about terms and conditions of work, the working conditions, and the terms of benefit to the employees. Other forms of meetings take the forms that are related to information or debrief of members. In every type of meeting the most common type of meeting that has to be implemented is the settlement of any common factor of deliberation. In such meetings, there has to be a decision that results from the liberations otherwise the status quo would be the best position to adopt and save time (Weynton 2000). To make decisions on teams or meetings of teams is a challenging exercise. The main reason for the difficult of the making of decisions is that these decisions are dependent on the input of several other individuals who are part of the negotiations. Several factors have to be factored in. These include the ability to make a decision about a deliberation that is taken in a meeting. The problem, in this case, is based on the deliberation took and the nature of the functions taken. In deliberations, the parties to the event have to come up with the best possible position to deal with an event. This implies that factors that the event date, the nature of the event and location have to be pre set in the calendar of the events planned so as to ensure that the each falls at it its time. Two things arise within the contexts of meetings, first, the nature of meetings and second the nature of the employees. The most common problems that managers face while leading meetings are related to the discipline of the employees. Pragmatic approaches to eliminating these problems are directly related to the planning phase and the setting of ground rules. Time management, for instance, is one area of conflict within a meeting. The team leader should negotiate the least possible amount of time for each speaker to save time for any excessive time requirements within the meeting. To achieve this position, the leader can anchor the deliberation about time by setting the best applicable alternative to a negotiated agreement to the lowest amount of time as possible. The negotiations can raise this amount of the time taken considerably, but the agreement will be set at an amount that will not be too high. The outcome of the meeting or the effectiveness of the meeting will depend on the outcome of the ground rules that are set at the beginning of the meeting. Through negotiations, a team leader can reach the best possible agreements that guide the proper running of the meeting. Another aspect of dealing with the problems associated with employees at meetings is to set out clear ground rules before the beginning of a meeting. These rules will help in maintaining the level of discipline within the meeting and guide the correction strategies to be used by employees that break the set guidelines (Rogers 2011). There are several myths that have been propagated by individuals in the past that seek to provide some explanations about attributes of meetings. These myths are derailing and if applied by any team leader would subject the entire meeting process of an organization to fail. These fallacies include aspects of the planning, time and the scope of the meeting. For instance, some school of thought believe that the longer the meeting then, the better the outcome of the same. The amount of time taken in a meeting does not necessarily translate to the effectiveness of the same. This is because longer meetings are likely to be boring, and participants will lose interest in the ongoing of the meeting. As a result, the participants will be physically present but mentally without the meeting. The most common mistake taken in at this point is that the planners of the meetings enlarge the scope of the meeting to cover so much that the membership of the meeting cannot handle within an appropriate time. To protect the meetings from drifting in to this droning for longer, the scope of the meeting should be tersely set by the team leader in order to reduce any chance of the meeting a long time (Blood & Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht 1993). In conclusion, meetings are an important aspect of an organization. A carefully planned meeting will result in to more effectiveness than long uncapped meetings. When organizing a meeting, the stakeholders of the meeting are picked or selected before the actual date of the meeting. These stakeholders are then informed about the agenda of the meeting in time to allow them plan for the day of the meeting. Setting the agenda for time makes the stakeholders plan in time for the information to relay at the meetings. During the meetings, the stage of setting the rules needs to be well negotiated so as to avoid any pitfalls in the consumption of time in the meetings. If the meetings will need to take a resolution, proper mechanisms of breaking an impasse should also be set at the beginning of the meeting. The impasse of the meeting is supposed to facilitate the point at which the meeting is supposed to be resolved no matter what the meetings direction. At this point, meeting initiative is supposed to focus at the point of devilry between the main points of the diversion. The level of difficulty in a process of moving on to a movement is essential. This makes the process of meetings really be progressive and naturist at the end of the day in order to make the day purposeful and economical, the implementation of the day has to be successful in terms of the economical viability and the days social activities. Social activities of the day have to be economically generating activities so as to make the day worth its value. References Bloed, A., & Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht. (1993). The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe: Analysis and basic documents, 1972-1993. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer in co-operation with the Europa Institute, Faculty of Law, University of Utrecht. Gamage, D. T. (2006). Professional development for leaders and managers of self-governing schools. Dordrecht: Springer. Henkel, S. L. (2007). Successful meetings: How to plan, prepare, and execute top-notch business meetings. Ocala, Fla: Atlantic Pub. Group. Poncini, G. (2007). Discursive strategies in multicultural business meetings. Bern: Peter Lang. Rogers, W. (2011). The professional practice of landscape architecture: A complete guide to starting and running your own firm. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley. Weynton, B. (2002). Organise meetings BSBADM405A. Chatswood, N.S.W: Software Publications. Read More