The Ten Commandments of Attending Meetings

From a personal-development perspective, you should consider work meetings as the proving ground equivalent of your schoolyard playground. There are certain do's and don'ts. And, if you're clueless about which is which, then you'll likely make an unfortunate—and lasting—impression. In other words, there's a fine line between right and wrong here. For example, you're expected to make meaningful contributions, but you can't take over an entire meeting and not allow other attendees to chime in. With these and other meeting etiquette topics in mind, author and leadership expert Michael Hyatt offers the following "Ten Commandments" of attending and participating in work meetings. To veteran employees, some of these rules may seem like simple standards of common courtesy. (Memo to the mobile generation: Pay more attention to the people in the room than you do to your smartphone or tablet.) However, if you've been in a meeting lately, you realize the rules are violated all the time. Hyatt is author of Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World (Thomas Nelson/available now), and Forbes has named him one of the "Top 50 Social Media Influencers of 2013."