Track 22

Unit 4b.

Business.

Managing international meetings.

Pages 68 and 69.

Listen for main ideas and Listen for details.

How many of you have ever organized a group of people?

Say like a study group or an English club or even a party.

Not easy right? lots of variables huh?

Well today we’re going to examine the three main challenges of leading an international business meeting and they are, one managing time, two managing people, and three managing resources.

Let’s start with the most basic one, time. In business there’s the expression time is money, has everyone heard that before? Time is money. But we can apply this idea to our discussion about business meetings every minute spent in a meeting needs to be used well.

As the American car maker Henry Ford said it has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste, he means time is valuable.

If we want to make progress, we have to use it well. As the meeting manager you can manage time by following one simple rule, create an agenda, and stick to it. It sounds easy huh?

Well no, when working with an international mix of people this isn’t easy. Americans for example are known for being prompt, other cultures southern Europeans and Latin Americans for example have a less formal approach to time, it’s your responsibility as meeting manager to make the rules for example if someone is talking on and on and on, you’ve got to bring the group back to the agenda. I call this staying on task by managing the clock throughout the meeting you’ll show everyone that you respect their time.

Okay next let’s look at the people aspect of running an international meeting does everyone remember the concepts of high and low context communication?

Good, well as a meeting manager it’s very important that you recognize who among the meeting participants are high context communicators and who are low context communicators.

Why? Because on the one hand you’re going to have some members say you’re North American business people wanting to get straight to work the minute the meeting starts, their laptops or whatever are out and they’re ready to talk business.

On the other hand other members say you’re South American and Vietnamese or Thai business people may want to spend a little time getting to know each other first, you know sipping their coffee you know chit-chatting and making small talk both approaches are fine it’s up to you to manage these differences.

How? Well let’s look for the answer in another challenge of managing people. This challenge relates to managing dynamics that’s D Y N A M I C D this is the energy created when people interact. We can start with seating, you want to arrange the room in a way that maximizes the energy, maximizes discussion this may mean you divide friends and put strangers together.

Round tables are good for improving eye contact and for discussion, however be careful how many people you put in an area different cultures like different amounts of personal space, for example most Americans like about 18 inches of space around them any closer and they’re likely to move back away from the group, not productive.

So returning to our high low context example can you see a solution?

Maybe you seat your participants around the table with plenty of space mixing the high and low context communicators, and mixing the personalities to balance the group energy. The bottom line about managing people is you’ve got to first understand the cultural differences as they say in the business world know your customer then balance those dynamics.

Last note on this one if you want to take it a step further, educate your participants at the very start of the meeting with a quick icebreaker, or warm-up activity that reminds everyone to respect each other’s cultures.

All right our last challenge is managing meeting resources gee

How many of us have been in a meeting where the presenters microphone sounds like a 1930s radio broadcast right?

Or the projector is so far from the screen that you can barely read the slides, it’s your responsibility to provide the resources and support that will make the meeting successful like what?

Well you should have an LCD projector and a laptop with all the usual business software, you’ll also need a microphone and a media system that works and don’t forget the value of an old fashioned flip chart or dry erase board and markers. And if you’re organizing a virtual meeting you’ll need teleconferencing or video conferencing technology.

And finally super important note here test out everything yourself before the meeting to be sure everything is a go, now remember that some participants may not have used newer technologies before and that’s where the support comes in you need a techie who can fix anything that goes wrong never be afraid to ask for help.

Let me conclude with this meet the challenges of managing time, people ,and technology and you’ll be rewarded with a successful international business meeting and success as they say in business is the bottom line.