Effective Meetings

Do you spend a large amount of your working time in meetings – either your own, or other people’s? This workshop focuses on how to make that time as productive as possible.

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Overview

Many people spend a huge amount of their time in meetings and yet there is often the feeling that real work only takes place outside the meeting. At the same time, most people recognise that there are certain best practices and frameworks that will enable meetings to be far more effective, productive, and even enjoyable.

The workshop process starts with pre-work, where each participant assesses the effectiveness of the meetings they attend or run against a short list of criteria.  This analysis is brought along to the workshop and participants use it as a basis for logging learning and action points from the different sessions – culminating with a set of commitments to take back to work.

The workshop itself is a packed and participative half day. Much of the “best practice” content will be shared/generated by the participants themselves, who will then be challenged to work out how to continue to apply it consistently in the meetings they are involved with – whether in person, virtual or hybrid.  Some simple frameworks for meeting design will also be explored, along with techniques for managing meeting behaviours.

Objectives

The aim of this workshop is to positively impact the level of productivity of those meetings that are in your sphere of influence within your organisation. The specific objectives are:

  1. To surface best practices and raise your level of commitment to carry them out in your organisation.
  2. To equip you to be more confident and skilled in how you structure and run a meeting, and how you can participate fully.

Course content  - Half day

Opening session

  • Welcome, introductions, overview.
  • What’s your experience of attending meetings? (Sharing of analysis from pre-work).

The basics of effective meetings

  • Excellent meetings – what is it about them..?
  • Key success factors before, during and after a meeting.
  • The “Hamburger” model for effective meetings.

Managing meetings

  • Good meeting design – “opening up and closing down” structure and techniques.
  • Decision making in meetings.
  • Problem behaviours and how to deal with them.

Closing session

  • What are you personally going to do to make a difference to the meetings you are involved with, either as the chair or a participant? (Stop, Start, Continue)
  • How can you influence best practice more widely in your organisation?