1 Meetings: good and bad

Photo of people at a meeting and looking at a laptop
Figure 1 A typical meeting

Meetings are not just part of organisational life – they also take place in less formal settings such as schools, village halls, pubs and cafés. The focus this week is primarily on meetings that voluntary organisations engage in and which may involve staff, volunteers, carers and service users, as well as other agencies. Even if you are not directly involved with a voluntary organisation, you can probably draw on your experience of attending other types of meeting.

In the first activity for this week we’d like you to recall some of the meetings you’ve attended and to think about why some meetings work and others don’t.

Activity 1 Thinking about meetings

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A successful meeting is often about good planning, being prepared for the meeting and ensuring that the meeting is handled well. For the rest of this week you will examine these issues in more detail.