Project MMS (Meeting Management Simulation)

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Types of meetings

According to Edward Scannell there are mainly four categories of meetings:

1. Information meetings including training sessions.
2. Action meetings, with two people addressing a problem to get closure and action.
3. Brainstorming meetings in order to generate a listing of creative solutions to problems.
4. Problem-solving meetings involving a group or team that gets together to attack a single problem.

Other: ...Staff meetings, planning meetings?

People meet for a variety of reasons. Generally, we meet in order to move group actions forward. We call this a task focus. To do this, participants do two things in meetings:

• They present information to others.
• They collaborate - review, evaluate, discuss, problem-solve, decide - with each other.

But people also meet for social reasons:

• The need to belong.
• The need to achieve and make an impact.
• A desire to communicate, build and share a common reality.

In planning a meeting, remember that for the task needs to be met, the social needs must be met and for the social needs to be met, the task needs must be met.

The group simulation focuses here on the last two categories of meetings, the brainstorming meeting and problem-solving meeting.

Link

http://www.3m.com/meetingnetwork/readingroom/meetingguide_anatomy.html

Source

Edward Scannell ("We’ve Got to Stop Meeting Like This," Training and Development, January 1992, pp. 70–71)