Have you ever found yourself in the position where, after disagreeing with someone in a meeting they have become rather hostile to you in the subsequent weeks?

Did you wonder whether it may have been your linguistic skills that had caused the negative reaction of your colleague, or did you simply want to make your view public with little concern to anything else?

This podcast takes these two language functions of agreeing and disagreeing and changes them into two powerful techniques that will both increase your effectiveness, and dramatically improve your relationships with your colleagues.

As many of you know I think that meetings are a fantastic opportunity.  I hope you’re not laughing, but people who are listening to this podcast who have been at work for quite some time will probably be thinking… “yeah I know that Mark, but I don’t really agree.  The meetings I go to are a waste of time“. In fact that’s what the research says,  it is common knowledge that people say 70% of the meetings they go to are a waste of time.

That’s really unfortunate.  The crucial reason as to why they are a waste of time is because the people who are running the meetings do not know how to run effective meetings. It’s not that difficult. There’s just a few techniques they need to learn.  Today however I’m not going to concentrate on how to run an effective meeting.  I will do a podcast on that.  But today I want to look at a couple of language functions of agreeing and disagreeing in meetings, language functions which are used an awful lot, or at least, should be used an awful lot in the meeting.  That is if you want to have debate and discussion of course, and really show that these two language functions combined with a couple of behavioural techniques can become very, very powerful and very crucial for your career development.

 

What Are Meetings Best Suited For?

* Types of Meetings

* Staff, Project, Brainstorming, 1 to 1’s, no.1’s, Commercial…etc

* My Focus: Regular Meetings with Colleagues

* The Clock of Money Not Time

* Information Sharing is Not Effective Use of Time – Usually

* The 3 D’s: Debate, Discussion and Decision

* How to Make Decisions Effective

* How to Run Effective Meetings

* Feel Secure

* Take Risks

* Collective Decisions

* HOW ?

 

The Linguistic Issues – What Phrases are Best

* Bad News: For Meetings You Need Many Language Functions

* Good News: You Need Only to Have One Phrase per Function

* Function: To Agree with Someone

* I agree. (a Verb not an Adjective)

* Function: To Partially Agree with Someone = Agreement With Flexibility

* I agree up to a point, and………

* The use of BUT

* When to Interupt?

* Disagreeing in English

* Always a Good Idea to Soften Any Disagreement

* Function: To Disagree

* I’m afraid I cannot agree with you on that

* I cannot agree with you on that

* The Difference of I’m afraid?

 

The Path to High Performance Meetings

* What is the Best Relationship in Your Life?

* Wife, Husband, Partner etc

* Why Is It The Best?

* Many Items But Respect is High Up On the List.

* How Did You Get There?

* Dressing Well, Arriving on Time, Booking Tickets in Advance…..

* Listening Attentively, Intensity of Feeling, Caring

* Effective Behaviour + Solid Relationship Building

* This Is The Goal. This is a High Performance Meeting / Team

* HOW Do We Reach That Level?