A business meeting or board is a mutual communication of people from different positions and even organizations to reach a joint decision.
Any manager, regardless of rank, conducts not only internal meetings and planning sessions but also business meetings and negotiations from time to time. In addition, one of the functions of a secretary or his assistant is the correct organization of these executive work meetings.
CLASSIFICATION OF BUSINESS MEETINGS
Some of the types of business meetings can be:
Internal. They are held among the employees of an institution, most often in the form of meetings, planning meetings. In large companies with a large branch network, extended meetings are also held between colleagues at the head office and branch offices. Meeting types such as conferences, seminars, remote video conferencing are used.
External. These are held between several companies. Often, only senior managers and sometimes middle managers participate. There are several formats of these meetings: negotiations, briefings, forums, round tables, etc.
Formal. They are those meetings where a certain protocol, an agenda, and even a dress code are established. In such meetings, there is a defined main objective: the signing of an agreement, the conclusion of an agreement of intent, etc.
Informal. When the general concept of the meeting is to achieve contact between participants from different organizations, to develop the trust of the participants in each other. Usually, these meetings do not have an official objective orientation. These encounters can be defined as informal knowledge and communication to facilitate future interaction.
Officer. In general, they are also formal meetings with a mandatory end of the meeting by signing any contract or commercial document.
Not official. In the case of informal meetings, these can be both formal and informal.
Also, the work meetings are usually divided into informational, advisory, and executive. The first two types are the most characteristic of internal meetings: informative: to inform employees about the general strategy and direction of the company, about the introduction of new technologies and production and development plans; advisory: to decide a certain problem; and executive meetings: these refer more often to external meetings.
STAGES OF A BUSINESS MEETING
In a meeting there are usually four mandatory phases:
1. Clarification of the points of view, the positions of the parties.
2. Discussion and argumentation of the points of view expressed. Conflicts and struggles of interests usually manifest themselves in this phase.
3. Reach a compromise, reconcile positions, reach an agreement on each issue that is discussed.
4. Analysis of the results and application of the agreements. This phase is distant from the rest in terms of time:
- Facilitate professional communication of specialists in the same field.
- Collective research and development of work plans.
- Keep in touch.
- Coordinate actions, control executed projects.
- Provide business activity support.
These are some of the types of meetings that are most frequently used by companies, the classification varies according to the purpose and to whom it is directed. For this reason, it is important to be clear about this information before carrying it out so that the participating team previously knows the conditions that are required. In addition, it is necessary to take into account and take care of the stages through which the meeting passes to achieve the expected purposes.
