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Hi folks!

First of all, thanks for creating such great podcasts and a community of people who love to learn! I have listened to over 100 h of your podcasts during the last few months and it really already might a difference ("How to prewire a meeting" is just excellent!

I am based in Northern Europe and got the task to lead a project which involves many people in different smaller project teams (3-4 people per country). I would like to use your meeting introduction tool, but I am sure it will not work as some peopel will join remotely.

Is there some other tool/modification of the meeting introduction tool that would work for teleconferences?

Cheers, Jochen

The discussion of the meeting introduction podcast can be found here: http://www.manager-tools.com/2005/12/december-2005-member-only-podcast

mmann's picture
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Seems like a place where the flip chart should be skipped.  If the group is small you should be able to explain the exercise, offer yourself up as an example, and proceed.  Ask for volunteers to go next, keep track of who has not gone, and call them out if the volunteering wanes.  Keep close watch on the timing though.  if the responses get too long, have some plants you can call upon to set the pace for shorter answers.

If the group is large, make adjustments per  http://www.manager-tools.com/2008/08/the-meeting-introduction-for-large-...

Have fun with it.  A minor modification I've used is to ask participants to tell the group where they were born or where they grew up.  It's personal information that many co-workers don't share with one another, and stimulates conversation and bonding.  I did this once and two people in the group discovered they went to the same small grade school in Japan!

--Michael

Jazzman's picture
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I ran a meeting using the Introduction tool where there was one participant who just couldn't be physically present.  So I had her make a power-point slide with the same exact content as the podcast lists.  Her slide was very, very creative and gave everyone a laugh.  Of course, she couldn't see the flip-chart pages of the others, but it was better than not giving her a chance to introduce herself in the same way. 

Not sure if it would be as effective in all cases but was useful for us.

-Jazz