Meeting management

Day 22 - 978 days to go

I attended the 2nd Bursa Malaysia Rat Race committee meeting today. Experienced some "interesting" discussion and communication. Sometimes, it is fun to experience or observe the behavior of meeting participants as you can always learn something from them. For example, meeting management skill, how to say "NO", how to embarrass another person skillfully, how to agree with the disagreement of another person and vive versa, how to control a meeting, etc.

Of course, I did not learn the above in this meeting but just want to point out the fact that the about experiences happen in most meeting. Similar to what you may experience at a poker table, due to personal interest, most people will reveal their true identity or personality. To put it bluntly, meeting room is just like a war zone, somehow amicable solution is not an option. Thus, a fight is unavoidable. Of course, there are always happy endings most of the time.

Some of the "wonderful" skills I experienced as a victim is that people will say yes to bosses in a meeting but will not act on the task that he agreed to assume. In other words, some people are very good at getting credit upfront without any delivery. Project Manager will end up doing the job instead. The best way to manage this type of "credit thief" is through documentation in black and white such as minutes and other forms of recordings.