California's Meeting Solutions conducted a poll recently that revealed that a third of Americans consider meetings to be a "complete waste of time". At your office you may find that meetings take up a good chunk of your calendar month. But meeting management is a key skill for executives to acquire. Winging it just won't do. Here are some tips on how to manage your meetings.

1. Send out a pre-conference e-mail with the agenda

2. Ask employees to bring creative suggestions to the meeting. This is a way to engage everybody

3. During the meeting, avoid giving the floor to the time-wasters: the brag-a-holics, perpetual fault-finders, etc.

If things begin to get out of control, if you notice emotions running high - people getting animated, defensive, or interrupting others to offer their opinions:

4. Bring things back to focus by summarizing what's going on. For example you can say, "Let me see if I understand what everyone is saying here ..."

5. Acknowledge the fact that people are getting upset by saying something like, "I can tell this is very important to you. Can you explain what you are worried about?"

6. Take a break from the issue at hand while leaving things on a positive note. You can say, "Lots of great ideas are being shared. Why don't we move on to the next topic and think about (the focused objective) for the next meeting?

7. Focus on post-meeting action items by defining the goal and the action that is going to be taken. Define who is going to do it and what resources they need.

Please share any techniques on meeting management that work for you.