A meeting is when two or more
people
A person (plural, : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of pr ...
come together to discuss one or more topics, often in a formal or business setting, but meetings also occur in a variety of other environments. Meetings can be used as form of
group decision making Group decision-making (also known as collaborative decision-making or collective decision-making) is a situation faced when individuals collectively make a choice from the alternatives before them. The decision is then no longer attributable to any ...
.
Definition
A meeting is a gathering of two or more people that has been convened for the purpose of achieving a common goal through verbal interaction, such as sharing information or reaching agreement.
Meetings may occur face-to-face or virtually, as mediated by communications technology, such as a
telephone conference call, a
skyped conference call or a
videoconference
Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Ency ...
. One Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a meeting as "an act or process of coming together" - for example "as
..an assembly for a common purpose
...
[Meeting – Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary](_blank)
(n.d.). Dictionary and Thesaurus – Merriam-Webster Online. Retrieved 2016-02-04.
Meeting planner
A meeting and convention planner supervises and coordinates the strategic, operational, and logistical activities necessary for the production of events. The planner can be employed or hired ad hoc by corporations, associations, governments, and ot ...
s and other meeting
professional
A professional is a member of a profession or any person who works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skil ...
s may use the term "meeting" to denote an event booked at a hotel,
convention center
A convention center (American English; or conference centre in British English) is a large building that is designed to hold a convention, where individuals and groups gather to promote and share common interests. Convention centers typica ...
or any other venue dedicated to such gatherings.
[Meeting and Convention Planners](_blank)
(2009, December 17). U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics and serves as a principal agency of th ...
. Retrieved April 21, 2010.
Anthropologist Helen B. Schwartzman defines a meeting as "a communicative event involving three or more people who agree to assemble for a purpose ostensibly related to the functioning of an organization or group."
For her, meetings are characterized by "multiparty talk that is episodic in nature, and participants either develop or use specific conventions for regulating this talk."
Types
![Training meeting in an ecodesign stainless steel company in brazil](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Training_meeting_in_an_ecodesign_stainless_steel_company_in_brazil.jpg)
The term "meeting" may refer to a
lecture
A lecture (from Latin ''lēctūra'' “reading” ) is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical inform ...
(one presentation),
seminar
A seminar is a form of academic instruction, either at an academic institution or offered by a commercial or professional organization. It has the function of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings, focusing each time on some parti ...
(typically several presentations, small audience, one day),
conference
A conference is a meeting of two or more experts to discuss and exchange opinions or new information about a particular topic.
Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always decisions, are the main p ...
(mid-size, one or more days),
congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of a ...
(large, several days),
exhibition or trade show (with staffed stands being visited by passers-by),
workshop
Beginning with the Industrial Revolution era, a workshop may be a room, rooms or building which provides both the area and tools (or machinery) that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods. Workshops were the only ...
(smaller, with active participants), training
course,
team-building session
Team building is a collective term for various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within teams, often involving collaborative tasks. It is distinct from team training, which is designed by a combine of business ...
and
kick-off event.
Common types of meeting include:
*
Committee meeting, a coming-together of a defined subset of an organization
* Investigative meeting, generally when conducting a pre-interview,
exit interview
An exit interview is a survey conducted with an individual who is separating from an organization or relationship. Most commonly, this occurs between an employee and an organization, a student and an educational institution, or a member and an a ...
or a meeting among the investigator and representative
*
Kickoff meeting
A kickoff meeting is the first meeting with the project team and with or without the customer, client of the project. This meeting would follow definition of the base elements for the project and other project planning activities. This meeting int ...
, the first meeting with a
project
A project is any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular goal.
An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of even ...
team and the client of the project to discuss the role of each team-member
*
Town hall meeting
Town hall meetings, also referred to as town halls or town hall forums, are a way for local and national politicians to meet with their constituents either to hear from them on topics of interest or to discuss specific upcoming legislation or ...
, an informal public gathering.
* Work meeting, which produces a product or intangible result such as a decision; compare
working group
A working group, or working party, is a group of experts working together to achieve specified goals. The groups are domain-specific and focus on discussion or activity around a specific subject area. The term can sometimes refer to an interdis ...
.
:*
Board
Board or Boards may refer to:
Flat surface
* Lumber, or other rigid material, milled or sawn flat
** Plank (wood)
** Cutting board
** Sounding board, of a musical instrument
* Cardboard (paper product)
* Paperboard
* Fiberboard
** Hardboard, a ty ...
meeting, a meeting of the
board of directors
A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...
of an organization
:* Management meeting, a meeting among
manager
Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business.
Management includes the activities o ...
s
:* Staff meeting, typically a meeting between a manager and those that report to that manager
:*
Team meeting
A team is a group of individuals (human or non-human) working together to achieve their goal.
As defined by Professor Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, " team is a group of people who are interdependent with respect to infor ...
, in project contexts - a meeting among colleagues working on various aspects of a
team
A team is a group of individuals (human or non-human) working together to achieve their goal.
As defined by Professor Leigh Thompson (academic), Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, " team is a group of people who are interde ...
project.
Other varieties include breakfast meetings off-site meetings (or
Awayday
A meeting is when two or more people come together to discuss one or more topics, often in a formal or business setting, but meetings also occur in a variety of other environments. Meetings can be used as form of group decision making.
Defini ...
meetings in the UK), and "stand-up meetings" where participants stand up to encourage brevity.
Since a meeting can be held once or often, the meeting organizer has to determine the repetition and frequency of occurrence of the meeting: one-time, recurring meeting, or a series meeting such as a monthly "lunch and learn" event at a company, church, club or organization in which the placeholder is the same, but the agenda and topics to be covered vary. In Russian, a "flying meeting" ( ru , летучий митинг , translit = letuchij miting ) is a hastily-called brief meeting.
[
]
Conversational analysis
Meetings have been studied using
conversation analysis
Conversation analysis (CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction, embracing both verbal and non-verbal conduct, in situations of everyday life. CA originated as a sociological method, but has since spread to other fields. CA began with ...
. Meetings are thought of as a distinct ''speech exchange system'' with different norms and rules. Participants may move in and out of the conversation exchange system during the meeting. A meeting will often have a chair who has some control over the discussion in the meeting. The chair may have a superior position in a social hierarchy or be appointed as a facilitator.
The beginning of the meeting speech exchange system is often indicated by nonverbal cues, or stating the purpose of the meeting. In formal meetings, the chair has control over turn-taking in a conversation. In informal meetings the participants often decide for themselves who turn taking functions with the chair occasionally intervening. Non-verbal communication with the chair may be used to take a turn.
Often the chair will control the choice of topic of discussion, different chairs will control the conversation in different ways. A pre-closing formulation is an individuals summarization of the groups understanding of a topic. Silence is often used to indicate agreement to this final formalization. Turns within a topic are expected to be related to previous turns of the topic as a whole. In settings turns are long and more loosely related to the previous turns. In these cases, the speaker may introduce the subject matter of the turn and related it to the agenda topic.
See also
References
Further reading
*
*
* 112 pages.
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