Lead Conversations That Count: How Busy Managers Run Great Meetings

by Carolyn Ellis

Meetings! Does your heart sink at the thought? When did you last attend a great one? Or are they wasted hours you'll never get back? Has meeting online only made things worse? In a busy and complex world, every conversation needs to count. We need constructive discussion, debate and decision-making processes, but technical expertise alone won't help you manage a roomful of people who disagree. If you are a meeting leader how you show up sets the bar for your meeting's success. Lead Conversations that Count offers a new approach to transform your meetings into productive and powerful events that people look forward to attending. Within these pages you'll learn the five COUNT building blocks that will prepare you to lead discussions, from online team meetings and daily standups to strategic retreats. Rich with tips, this book delivers a roadmap of practical tools to prepare for your next meeting in as little as ten minutes. If you are ready to ditch boring meetings and create meaningful, impactful dialogue with your team, then Lead Conversations that Count is for you.

220 pages, Paperback

Published July 22, 2021

About the author

Carolyn Ellis is an interdisciplinary scholar and qualitative researcher, widely regarded as an originator and developer of autoethnography, a reflexive approach to research, writing, and storytelling that connects the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political.

She is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of South Florida and an Honorary Professor at the Communication University of China. She served as President of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and is a founding member of the Ethnography Division in the National Communication Association and the Section on Emotions in the American Sociological Association. Among her publications are a documentary film, five monographs, six edited books, and more than 150 articles, book chapters, and essays on autoethnography, ethnography, compassionate and interactive interviewing, research ethics, death and dying, minor bodily stigmas, caregiving, intimate relationships, health and illness, and research with Holocaust survivors.[4][5] Ellis retired from the University of South Florida in 2018.