Friday Five: Meetings, Meetings

I'm laughing at ReverendMother's Friday Five today, because I'm doing mine between two meetings!

Here we go, speedy edition:

1. What's your view of meetings? Choose one or more, or make up your own:a) When they're good, they're good. I love the feeling of people working well together on a common goal.b) I don't seek them out, but I recognize them as a necessary part of life.c) The only good meeting is a canceled meeting.
I'm going with option a on this one-- I love a meeting where the sharing of ideas really gets things done. Having said that, there are a lot of awful meetings to get through...

2. Do you like some amount of community building or conversation, or are you all business?
If you want to chat before or after the meeting (and I usually do), knock yourself out. Otherwise, I think it can be disrespectful of people's time to lolligag when there are things that need to be taken care of.

3. How do you feel about leading meetings? Share any particular strengths or weaknesses you have in this area.
I am very comfortable leading meetings. I think I'm pretty good at it-- I make it a point to encourage the people who want to be heard, to try to get everyone to at least understand what's being said (agreement is out of my hands), and I keep everyone on task very well. Having said that, I'm sure there might be people who feel that leaving chattiness out of the meeting time was a weakness.

4. Have you ever participated in a virtual meeting? (conference call, IM, chat, etc.) What do you think of this format?
I've been in on several conference calls, and my experience is that people tend to screw around. I don't particularly care for them, if there's an alternative.

5. Share a story of a memorable meeting you attended.
When I started facilitating our Christian Formation department meetings, I realized that my leadership skills were a lot stronger than I realized. It was a fantastic feeling. I learned that I was patient and a good listener, but also able to steer the meetings effectively. There's not one meeting that stands out, though I know we did good things that year. It was a good time to learn about myself.