Let’s Stop Meeting Like This: A Review

No matter what you do for a living, you are expected to participate in meetings. It doesn’t end at work, of course. You attend meetings at your church, civic organization, and volunteer project. For the most part, meetings are something we dread and endure.

Dick and Emily Axelrod seek to provide a remedy in their book Let’s Stop Meeting Like This: Tools to Save Time and Get More Done. They present a practical model that is adaptable to all types of meetings.

Their basic model is labeled The Meeting Canoe and involves six movements:

Welcome people.
Connect people to each other and the task.
Discover the way things are.
Elicit people’s dreams.
Decide.
Attend to the end.

The model embodies not only good group process, but parallels the approach we in use in Disciple Development Coaching © at Pinnacle Leadership Associates:

Ask and Listen (Welcome and Connect)
Explore (Discover and Elicit)
Design (Decide)
Commit and Support (Attend)

There are a number of helpful guides in the book including the five questions that should open every meeting:

Why are we meeting?
What do we want to be different because this group of people meets?
Who needs to be in our crew?
How do we get people to take ownership of the meeting?
Where and how long will we meet?

Simply applying these questions would not only make our meetings more effective but minimize the number of meetings held. Cutting out unnecessary meetings is a good thing!

I highly recommend this book as a resource for anyone who has the responsibility for calling and conducting meetings. Implementing these ideas will help meeting participants to feel involved, productive, and leave feeling their time has been well spent.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.

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