Meetings – the dark arts revealed

Sooner or later, every dental nurse will attend a meeting – and those in a leadership position will be called upon to arrange meetings.

In doing so, they will no doubt call upon their professional training on how to arrange a meeting properly. There are many courses that teach ‘good practice’ – how to set out agenda, how to prepare minutes following a meeting and so on.

However, no courses teach students the dark arts of meetings – how to manipulate them, how to sabotage agenda items, or how to change the outcome.

The purpose of this article is not to encourage you to go to the Dark Side, but to reveal the perils awaiting the unwary. Forearmed is forewarned. So, how exactly do people manipulate meetings? Here, are the seven deadly ‘meeting’ sins…