Meeting Skills Training Course - 1 Day

The purpose of this course is to answer the following question.

"How can we have more productive meetings that are goal-focused, well designed, well managed, well prepared and held in the correct frame of mind?"

Meetings are costly. If they are to be cost effective, they must be productive. We are here to learn how to make meetings more productive.

1. The cost of the meeting is very high. Therefore, the value of the meeting must be even higher.
2. Don't hold a £2k meeting for a £1k decision
3. What are the three practical alternatives to having a face to face meeting?
4. What are the benefits to having a face to face meeting?

All effective meetings share the following five characteristics:

1. Clear Purpose.
   There must be a definite purpose to the meeting - too many meetings drift on without purpose.
2. Accurate Language.
   The language must be focused and accurate. No ambiguity, vagueness, repetition or digression.
3. Planned Approach.
   The meeting should have an agenda, a definite structure.
4. Rational conflict management and decision methods.
   The meeting will often be held in order to make some kind of decision, or to analyse a difficult situation, therefore, the meeting may create disagreements and some conflicts. Such decisions, analysis and conflicts need to be discussed and aired rationally, not emotionally; with logic, not with upset or anger.
5. Positive atmosphere.
   To be most valuable, the meeting must be held in the spirit of cooperation: not antagonism.

We examine the role of the chairperson and what skills are required.

All meetings must achieve goals, so we learn about goal setting.

All meetings use terms that have multiple possible interpretations. To avoid ambiguity, we must define all key terms. We examine how create clear definitions.

There are five types of decision:

1. Yes or No? (Should we or should we not?)
2. Which one, what kind? Decisions
3. What is the priority order? Decisions
4. What is the correct logical sequence? Decisions
5. Problem cause solution. Decisions

The minutes of the meeting are the written notes (or recordings) of the main essentials of the meeting. We learn how to take good notes.

The delegates are those people who attend the meeting. They come in various types:

• The railroader: The person who tries to dominate the meeting by pushing his ideas on the others without proper thought.
• The joker: The person who misuses humour and detracts rather than adds value to the meeting.
• The digresser: The person who cannot keep his mind on the issue at hand and talks for too long about non-related or trivial issues.
• The cynic: The person who criticises all ideas without having any positive or practical ideas of his own to offer in their place.
• The 'broken record': The person who is obsessive over one issue, the delegate who cannot stop from thinking and talking about only one thing.

How to handle objections from delegates, in meetings.

1. Listen
2. Reflect
3. Question down
4. Answer
5. Confirm
6. Move on

A series of questions to tease out four success behaviours to apply to meetings.

How to use voice volume, pitch and pace to get the best results

How to use eye contact, body posture, hand and arm gestures, to get the best results

Summary and Action Plan