Whenever educators gather to achieve a common goal, every participant should arrive with a sense of purpose and leave with a feeling of accomplishment. This book explains how to make meetings more efficient and effective. It outlines: (1) the correlation between excellent meetings and excellent results; (2) how to plan, open, conduct, and follow through with meetings; and (3) strategies for managing problems that arise during meetings. Chapter 1 addresses how morale, culture, planning, team building, and change are enhanced through productive meetings. Chapter 2 examines different meetings in which school leaders participate--parent, faculty, grievance, community groups, media, student, and opening and closing school sessions. Chapter 3 stresses the importance of determining if a meeting is necessary, and if so, establishing the purpose, agenda, handouts, time, place, participants, and minutes. The leader's role in terms of establishing climate, facilitating the group, observing body language, building consensus, closing, evaluating, and acting on evaluations is described in the fourth chapter. The final chapter analyzes common conflict situations and illustrates ways to handle them. A resource list contains planning tools, such as sample communications and checklists. An annotated bibliography of 22 references is included. (LMI)