I agree – a 30 point agenda is not a recipe for an effective meeting. Meetings tend to fall into 2 broad categories: update advice with consequent  negotiations/ actions set or developmental where one or more concepts of situations are posed and creative discussions happen with actions agreed to progress those outcomes.  In either case, unless y…[Read more]

If you do decide to adopt some local empathy into your introductions, make sure you do your homework to get it exactly right as making cultural gaffes may be worse than not adopting them at all.

Introductions IMO tend to be in the middle of the organisations culture and the meeting cultures of the people attending. When attending a country with a different meeting culture, don’t expect them to adapt to  yours. When they are in your country, maintain your own meeting culture but show sensitivity to things that might be deal breakers.

Thanks, Ron!

Introductions is an area that seems to have a lot of cultural factors that need to be taken into account. For example, in Japan, there are factors of the highly ritualised process of exchanging business cards. In both West Africa and the Middle East, one may be expected to share details about family and children – and ask the other…[Read more]

Try to have something welcoming at arrival: if a morning offer hot drinks and maybe bacon rolls (include vegan too ); if lunch then offer  maybe a buffet. This not only attracts attendees but allows some for some pre meeting mingling, ice breaking etc.  Regardless have at least one person responsible for welcoming the people arriving and, if r…[Read more]

Try a traditional round robin of introductions around the table but with a little bit more substance – (don’t just get  names and titles…ask each to give a few minutes explaining what they do what their thought  contribution is on the project and maybe some small personal details to humanise them)