“The word ‘meeting’ covers a huge range of different interactions. If you want successful meetings you have to be more specific.” – David Pearl
Alright, I’ve spent a couple of posts complaining about meetings. With those little rants out of the way, let’s turn our attention to solving the problem. A good place to start is to understand the seven essential reasons why people meet.
As business consultant David Pearl tells us, in Will There Be Donuts?, “The word ‘meeting’ covers a huge range of different interactions. It is such a general term that it has no real meaning any more. If you want successful meetings you have to be more specific. And that means understanding the fundamental reasons we humans meet.”
In Pearl’s view, there are seven reasons why we meet. Click on the links below to learn more about each meeting type, and how to make your meetings successful.
| Reason for Meeting |
Main Purpose |
|---|---|
| To Inform | To share information. |
| To Discuss | To hear everyone’s voice, everyone’s opinion, and to maintain social cohesion. |
| To Decide | To choose a course of action. |
| To (Re)Solve | To pool different points of view, to conceptualize ways around a problem. |
| To Innovate | To pool ideas, under the presumption that you can collectively come up with a better idea than any individual. |
| To Sell | To convince an audience of something. |
| To Meet | To form and strengthen relationships, social, and personal bonds. |
Lee Brooks is the founder of Cromulent Marketing, a boutique marketing agency specializing in crafting messaging, creating content, and managing public relations for B2B technology companies.
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