Professional Practices for Improving Meeting Efficiency and Cross-Cultural Differences

I'm sure you'll all agree that the meeting in scenario 2 was the more professional one. What made the difference? Let's look at what Karen and the others did. Which of these actions from the two videos were good things to do? When someone is late, go ahead and start the meeting on time. When Karen asks the whole team, what do you think? Two people answered at once. It was much better to ask each person individually. If you're late to a meeting, try to enter quietly. When Tina and Neil took turns giving their opinions, it was much easier to understand them.

Neil needed to clarify something that Tina said, so he interrupted her. But he did it with a polite 'excuse me.' Neil times Tina started to talk about herself, to give personal stories that weren't important to the discussion. Karen interrupted her politely each time and brought the discussion back to the topic. Would this more professional behavior be appropriate in your country or company? It depends. Different countries and even different companies have different cultures and customs.

At some companies, meetings are quite formal, and everyone is careful to be on time. In other companies, people chat informally until everyone is there and may start every meeting around five minutes late. It really depends on the organizational culture. In the US and Canada, people tend to be on time in business situations, such as meetings, but not so punctual in social situations like parties. If someone is late to a meeting, they come in quietly and maybe with a short apology.

Another thing that differs from country to country is the speaking styles in meetings. In the United States, taking turns is typical of formal meetings, especially when they're large meetings and also in teleconferences as you'll see later this week. In that case, people raise their hands slightly to indicate that they'd like to speak and it's the chair's job to manage who speaks next.

But in smaller, more casual meetings, people may interrupt each other more and there may be several conversations going on at the same time. The chair or leader of the meeting is responsible for keeping things on track. In other words, for making sure that people keep to the topic and don't talk about things that aren't really connected to the reason for the meeting.