Office English / Organising meetings

Have you ever been in a meeting that feels like a waste of time?

I think the best way to keep a meeting on track is to have an agenda, but also to really be aware of timing.

I try to let other people do most of the talking. By leading it, I guess I am guiding the conversation, but mainly allowing other people to speak, I hope.

In this episode we'll talk about how to organise and run a meeting so that you get the job done.

Hello! Welcome to a new series of Office English from BBC Learning English. In this podcast, we help you find the right words for tricky situations at work. I'm Phil.

And I'm Pippa. Find a transcript for this episode on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.

We just heard from Beth and Neil about meetings and how they try to keep them on track. If a meeting is on track, people are talking about the right things and the meeting doesn't go on too long. Pippa, have you ever been in a meeting that wasn't on track?

I have been in a meeting that wasn't on track. I have been in meetings where people have talked for an hour, and at the end of the meeting, I'm not sure what was decided. I've also been in meetings where people have talked for an hour, and it's been really exciting and great to discuss something. So I think, uh, yes, it can go either way when you have a meeting. What about you, Phil?

Yeah, I mean, I think the same. I think there's a real skill to chairing or facilitating a meeting, to keeping it on track. And you can achieve a lot when everyone's contributing and you're working to the topics that you want to achieve. Equally, they can just become not a very good use of everyone's time.

Yes. We've talked about meetings before on Office English, we talked about how to speak up in meetings. But today we're going to talk about organising a meeting, leading a meeting, and what to do when things go wrong.