text: Companies that embrace work teams quickly discover a basic truth: More teams mean more meetings. Management experts laud the benefits of enlightened teamwork, but they spend much less time dwelling on the often long, sometimes pointless and nearly always inefficient meetings that teams breed. With teams fast becoming a fixture in the corporate world, meeting management, or facilitation, is becoming a critical skill for anyone with executive ambitions. Author Ingrid Bens' definition of a facilitator is quite specific - someone who guides a meeting without actually participating in discussion or decision making - but her book is filled with practical advice that any professional can apply when running a meeting. A host of charts, examples and worksheets (not to mention the accompanying CD) help illustrate her process for steering meetings without controlling or directing the outcome. We [...] recommend this hands-on how-to guide to anyone motivated to minimize the waste of meeting-creep
  