Also, it's not a good idea to send a direct a list of topics that you're going to talk about. In theory, this makes good sense: the direct will be prepared, and the meeting will be more efficient. What actually happens in far too many cases is that the direct will actually spend time in their portion of the agenda addressing your list. You can tell us it's not so, you really only mean to talk about your list during your time. But that's not what our years of research have shown. It has been our experience that managers who share a list of topics in advance step on the direct's agenda, reducing
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