A: You need to confront this behaviour and try to find out WHY someone appears to be trying to sabotage the meeting – they might not be aware that this is the effect of their behaviour. If this doesn’t work, you may need to ask the saboteur to leave or suspend the meeting and reconvene […]

A: It is good practice in larger meetings (say, more than 10 attendees) to nominate a person to keep watch for people going off-topic – in smaller meetings this would be part of the chair’s role. Usually you can get people back on topic by gently reminding the meeting of the point of the discussion […]

A: It depends why this is happening. Are they unprepared because they haven’t been briefed, or the joining instructions were inadequate, or they’re too busy on other matters? Finding the reason for the unpreparedness will generally lead you towards a solution.