corporate meeting planning

Communication Basics - corporate meeting planning
The majority of people communicate in a way that is fundamentally flawed - in that they adopt the egocentric communication model. This involves the speaker deciding what they want to say and how they want to say it, with little or no regard for the characteristics of their audience. This process of packaging a message is called encoding. The next step in a communication is to send the encoded message to the receiver. The receiver then has the job of decoding the message in terms that they can relate to. It is at this point that they may misinterpret, change, filter or edit the message to fit into their own preconceived framework. To minimize the chance of your message being misinterpreted another step should be added to the communication model. This new step is called translating and involves you encoding the message as before, but then translating the message. When done properly the result of this translation step is to frame the message in terms that are better suited to the audience.

In other words, the result is a far more relevant and focused message for the audience to decode. This process will produce a message that is clearer and has more impact. Think about how many times you and your colleagues have attended the same meeting and yet have come away with different interpretations about what was meant. When preparing your messages, try to think of the different ways that it could be interpreted by your audience; and try to translate it in a way that will minimize inaccurate interpretations.

Understanding the Audience
Understanding the types of personality that are likely to attend a corporate meeting planning event will help you to encode your message in an appropriate way.
Analysis of personality types can be undertaken based on a simple but effective model. On this diagram the vertical line shows levels of dominance and the horizontal line represents levels of sociability. Each participant attending a forthcoming meeting can be classified as one of four basic personality types:

1. Emotive people are people-oriented and they tend to be; sociable, animated, spontaneous, unstructured and welcoming of change. They prefer the broad picture but can’t be bothered with the details. Emotive people often have a short attention span, so your case should be short and focused and pitched at the overview level, avoiding discussion of the details.

2. Directive people are high in dominance but low in sociability. They tend to be: aggressive, intense, pushy, determined and opinionated. Their goal driven nature can be misinterpreted as unfriendly, especially if they encounter resistance to their aims at work. When presenting to these people stick to the facts, cover each point clinically and proceed to the next.

3. Reflective people are low in both dominance and sociability. They tend to be: precise, questioning, aloof, serious, scientific and stuffy. They often occupy product related jobs - such as scientists and engineers. When presenting to these people supply plenty of detail and have support information at hand, in order to address the detailed questions that they are likely to ask.

4. Supportive people are high in sociability and low in dominance. Their traits make them easy to recognize, they are: loyal, steady, solid and reliable good workers. The majority of people are from this group, but you should bear in mind that they tend to fear change and will worry if given cause. You should therefore avoid being seen as uncaring or aggressive and should take time to pre-empt any contentious issues.

There are three questions that you need to ask concerning the characteristics of the participants at a forthcoming meeting:
Firstly, what personality types are likely to attend?
Secondly, how can you recognize them in advance?
And finally, what happens if the meeting contains a mix of personality types?

Targeting Your Message
It is important to target your message to the correct audience, if you prepare for reflective candidates and the meeting group is predominantly Directive then they are likely to become bored - and being directives they will probably make their feelings known.

Of course this profiling depends, to some extent, on a familiarity with the meeting group. This will be easier with work colleagues than, for example, when preparing for a high level sales meeting with an external organization. You will often have to piece together the profile of the participants from a variety of sources - such as their job titles. Other information that may prove useful includes any previous correspondence or conversations and anecdotal stories passed on by colleagues.

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