Much of many managers' time is taken up with meetings. There are meetings with colleagues to agree a course of action. There are meetings with superiors to report and to discuss future policies. There are meetings with subordinates. Many would say that there are far too many meetings some would be even less polite. There can, however, be no doubt that meetings are part of every manager's life. He should therefore know how to cope with them. He should know the techniques of communication in meetings. He should know how to use these techniques to his own advantage. It is sometimes suggested that when a manager can't think what to do, he holds a meeting. But meetings in themselves are not an end product, no matter what some may think. They are merely one of many means of management communication. It may well be that a problem can be solved by a one-to-one discussion, face-to-face, or even by telephone. If the need can be met without a meeting, so be it. Let us therefore define a meeting, in the management sense, as the gathering together of a group of people for a controlled discussion, with a specific purpose. Each of those attending the meeting has a need to be there and both discussion and its result would not be so well achieved in any other way. It is often advisable to calculate the cost of a meeting. A simple meeting of a few people on middle-executive salaries can soon run into three-figure costs for wages alone. Do not, therefore, have unnecessary people sitting in at meetings and do ensure that all meetings are both efficient and effective. How many different kinds of meetings are mentioned in the first paragraph?