The Purpose and Methods of Meeting Evaluation
By Baili78
Abstract
To maintain and improve meeting quality, we can use a tool called meeting evaluation. There are various methods to evaluate a meeting. One should select a right method to evaluate the meeting based on the specific situation of the meeting. And I suggest an integrated evaluation including short term and long term evaluation.
Introduction
People to a certain extent have negative attitudes about meetings. Humorist John Cleese (1993) used “Meetings, Bloody Meetings” as title of his educational (but humorous) videotape on the subject. DeWine (2001) wrote that meetings are “usually thought of as time wasters.” Scott Snair (2003) even wrote a book titled “Stop the meeting, I want to get off” to express his extreme hate about meaningless and terrible meetings and discuss managerial methods with no meetings.
But meetings do have values in every organization. We need meetings for the reasons below:
1. To announce organizational changes and keep employees up to date
2. To produce solutions and to increase the number of different solutions to organizational problems
3. To gain “buy in” or acceptance of a decision through participation
4. To “cultivate members as individuals” and create group cohesion (Dewine, 2001)
So we have to do something to improve the meetings we hold to become performance enhancers but not time-wasters, and one of the most effective ways to improve meetings is meetings evaluation. In this paper I will present you opinions of three famous authors about why and how to implement meetings evaluation, and also my position about this subject.