10 Tips for valuable contribution to a meeting

As a mem­ber of a work­ing place, or as a par­tic­i­pant in a one off meet­ing, you will have to use your office sur­vivor tal­ent to influ­ence on deci­sion mak­ing and to make your tal­ent known and avail­able to the orga­ni­za­tion. You can attend a meet­ing or you can be a par­tic­i­pant. Whether solv­ing prob­lems or pool­ing ideas, a meet­ing in which you are involved can be pro­duc­tive for you and the orga­ni­za­tion, depend­ing on how you act and what real con­tri­bu­tion you make

1.     Under­stand why you have been asked to participate

We saw sev­eral ques­tions an office sur­vivor will ask him­self as he joined a meet­ing. We bring some of the basic con­cept the office pol­i­tics mas­ters should have. Its the basic of all pol­i­tics thinking

• Have I been brought in sim­ply to fill the gap?

If you thing you are for fill­ing the gap, take imme­di­ate action and get out. as on office sur­vivor, you will not allow oth­ers to manip­u­late you and use you as a tool for their demise

• Am I rep­re­sent­ing a depart­ment or sec­tion or spe­cial group?

In the orga­ni­za­tion, you align your­self to sev­eral agen­das. Make sure you are rep­re­sent­ing both the group agenda and your sur­vival point of view agenda.

• Have I been brought to pro­vide exper­tise or com­pe­tence in a par­tic­u­lar area?

This ques­tion you should not ask your­self. OFCOURSE you have been brought because of your exper­tise. Now that we made it clear that this is the atti­tude, make sure to show your exper­tise few times.

• Am I here as the orga­ni­za­tion bright young per­son with ideas?

That think­ing is nice but the truth heart. Don’t think you look a star in the orga­ni­za­tion. Think you are an office sur­vivor and thus you make your arrival for the meet­ing should be affected that way. Being the bright star some­thing can make resent­ment in oth­ers, thus its bet­ter to stay behind it.

• Am I here as the voice of expe­ri­ence the steady­ing influence?

Always act as you are

When you can answer such ques­tions, you can chan­nel your efforts appropriately.

 

2.     Know the other participants

 

Find out all you can about the other participants:

·        Their likes and dislikes,

·        Strong and weak points,

·        The pow­ers they have,

·        The way they operate,

·        How they react to new ideas and proposals.

Know­ing this, you can adopt effec­tive tac­tic for deal­ing with them.

3.     Arrive pre­pared

·        Pre­pare your­self by study­ing the agenda and all work­ing papers in advance.

·         Focus on items for your par­tic­u­lar atten­tion and antic­i­pate any needs the group will have for data you can supply.

·        Pre­pare for your involve­ment by com­pil­ing hand­outs or charts, work­ing up sug­ges­tions or rec­om­men­da­tions, and mak­ing notes from which to speak if required.

·        You may choose to can­vass the views of influ­en­tial par­tic­i­pants beforehand.

The amount of prepa­ra­tion you do will deter­mine how oth­ers view you-as a pas­sen­ger or as a val­ued par­tic­i­pant. Plan in advance to make at least one spe­cific contribution.

4.     Arrive early and use the time wisely

Arrive early and take the oppor­tu­nity if nec­es­sary to intro­duce your­self to other par­tic­i­pants. Use the wait­ing time prof­itabil­ity, and try to gain addi­tional infor­ma­tion such as:

·        Their posi­tion on cer­tain agenda items.

·        Their over­all view of life .inves­ti­gate their per­sonal state (mar­ried, kids, car…).this will give you more indi­ca­tion what kind of a man stand in front of you, thus help you in ana­lyz­ing his per­son­al­ity, and helps you select the appro­pri­ate words once you need to get into confrontation.

·        If pos­si­ble, get a seat close to the chairperson-you will get more involved and you will be notice.

5.     Talk up and get involved

Don’t hes­i­tate to get into the act. A weak –cho­sen ques­tion cab often help to break the ice, Then you can enter into the dis­cus­sion and speak freely.

Research has shown that talk­a­tive par­tic­i­pant s usu­ally con­tribute the most use­ful remarks, have the best ideas and impress other mem­bers. The only draw­back is that, in becom­ing influ­en­tial, you also run the risk of becom­ing unpop­u­lar; some peo­ple can see pro­duc­tiv­ity as a kind of con­trol mech­a­nizm and there­fore resent it. These peo­ple usu­ally are either unhappy peo­ple in per­sonal life or unhappy with their sta­tus at work so know­ing this from step 4 will help you.

6.     Make your pres­ence felt

Make your points clearly, suc­cinctly and pos­i­tively. Remain silent when you have noth­ing use­ful to say. Lis­ten, observe and save your argu­ments until you can make a really telling point .Con­trol the urge to dom­i­nate the discussion.

Here are sev­eral key points that can make your present more notable, rec­og­nized as valu­able and appre­ci­ated by both the group and the chairperson:

·        Build your argu­ment on the ideas of oth­ers, e.g. : pose; what if’? questions,

·        seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion in rel­e­vant issues

·        make con­struc­tive and sup­port­ive comments

·        Be open minded.

·        Be will­ing to compromise.

·        Be respect­ful of other’s contribution.

 

7.     Be an active listener

Prac­tice the skill of lis­ten­ing in meet­ings because it will lead to under­stand­ing and good ques­tions. Often many peo­ple try to talk at once; as a result there are too many inter­rup­tions. At other times, peo­ple are to busy to hear what oth­ers are say­ing. AS well, ani­mos­ity between par­tic­i­pants often cause some not to lis­ten or to dis­re­gard what’s been sais What­ever the rea­son, fail­ing to lis­ten actively can cause meet­ings to fail.

8.     Be will­ing to learn

Go into meet­ings pre­pared to learn. An effec­tive par­tic­i­pant in meet­ings doesn’t always mean get­ting your own way. Rather, it means learn­ing from oth­ers, accept­ing crit­i­cism and incor­po­rat­ing with the ideas of theirs into your own proposal.

9.     Should I Wrap-up the meeting?

This is very prob­lem­atic issue:

You can either impress the chair­per­son, who is usu­ally pleased to finds some­one will­ing to bring things together us a final sum­mary, report, or action plan,

But

Make other par­tic­i­pant resent you will­ing­ness because they will see it a suck­ing to the boss

The solu­tion is. Instead of vol­un­teer, try to set up a rounded vol­un­teer­ing task .each time another par­tic­i­pate wrap the meet­ing, but make sure you man­age the list.

10. Adhere to the rules of meet­ing etiquette

Con­sider the fol­low­ing and try to fol­low them most of the time. These are very basic rules of man­ners learned from our youth.

• Avoid inter­rupt­ing
• Refrain from dis­tract­ing behav­ior such as pen­cil tapping
• Avoid side com­ments to your neigh­bor. If you have some­thing to say, day it to the group.
• Always be pleas­ant, cour­te­ous and tact­ful. If you must dis­credit anther s pro­posal, expose its defects but not the person’s ones.

Some­times you might con­sider break­ing these rules as it fits in your office sur­vivor politic game. Break­ing a rule might be a good tac­tic for a scare tac­tic, but do the appro­pri­ate prepa­ra­tion for it. Make sure the guy don’t have much power and the other par­tic­i­pant wont find this tac­tic not polite.

 

 

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