Is a meeting a conversation?

If cracking conversation addresses a myriad of business needs, why is it “conversation” rather than “meetings”?

The glib answer is that cracking meetings did not sound as attractive. There is also a serious point. We felt that “meeting” has more formal connotations, often with explicit structure and objectives. We cover managing that structure in our work. Beyond that, conversation is the more general case and that is what we wanted to address. Our premise is that all effective meetings involve conversation.

Now you may think it is possible to have a meeting where you are just delivering a message and no conversation takes place. We suggest that even then you will not be able to help yourself. You will transmit tons of information about your attitude and concerns. You will also be unable to resist reading all the information coming the other way, even- and sometimes especially- from people sitting in silence.

We examine conversation in that wider sense: the inevitable exchange that occurs when two people meet. By breaking it down into a few fundamentals- including Silence- we help people message what they intend and not something less helpful. It works in business meetings; it works elsewhere. Meetings are a situation. We are concerned with the activity: what is being done in any situation where people exchange ideas or information.