Effective Meeting Training

Effective Meeting Training - 1 day open course

About the Effective Meetings Training Course

Effective meetings training is intended to help you maximise the progress you make in your meetings.

We can do this in two ways:

1. Eliminate common errors that cause meetings to become non-productive
2. Apply positive skills that will allow you to get more done in less time

Effective Meeting Training Course Overview

Effective Meetings Training AM

Introduction

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?”

The high cost of meetings

If you are going to have a meeting, then make sure that the value derived from the meeting outweighs the cost of the meeting.

This course sets out the method by which you may avoid the pitfalls of bad meetings and reap the benefits of good meetings.

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?

The five qualities of productive meetings

In order for your meetings to be more productive, they should conform to the following five key principles:

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. Not too much 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.

The role of the chairperson

The chair person is a member of the meeting who directs and coordinates the activities of the delegates.
Notes on the chairing the meeting skills.

The agenda

The agenda is a written document that states the purpose of the meeting. It gives the meeting a structure.

The minutes / notes

The minutes of the meeting are the written notes (or recordings) of the main essentials of the meeting. Notes on note taking skills.

Effective Meetings Training PM

The Delegates

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

• The railroader
  The railroader is the person who tries to dominate the meeting by pushing his ideas on the others without proper thought.
• The joker
  The joker misuses humour and detracts rather than adds value to the meeting.
• The digresser
  The digresser is 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 cynic is 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.

Five types of decision

There is a need to make decisions.

• Don't procrastinate unnecessarily on making the decisions.
• Don't be tempted to endlessly delay making the decision on the grounds that you do not yet have perfect knowledge.
• You need to decide even in the face of incomplete and uncertain knowledge.

Decision matrix methods

There are six types of decision:

1. Yes or No? Decisions. (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.
6. Problem implication and countermeasure. Decisions.

Three skills of proper analysis.

1. Analyse the MEANING of key words and phrases, of the item under discussion. Agree a SINGLE meaning of your key terms. (Avoid damaging misunderstandings and arguments caused by the fact that the same word, or term, may have different meanings to different people in the room.) For example, the term “Aggressive” has multiple possible connotations.
2. Analysis: Analysis is the act of breaking complex concepts into their constituent parts. Everything may be regarded as being constructed of smaller parts. To understand any situation, it is usually necessary to subdivide it into its constituent parts, and to think about each part separately: (Not to try to talk about everything at once or to keep switching categories).
3. Analysis of problem cause and solution. We assume all problems have multiple causes, each of which suggest potential solutions.

The importance of taking good notes

1. In the meeting take good written notes.
2. Mental notes. (Memory training).
3. Make up your written notes.
4. Make up your action plans.
5. Review your notes. Don't ignore them.

Meeting skills. A Practice Exercise.

Let us hold a meeting in order to come to definite conclusions.
Let us see how well you do.
Discussion and questions.

Summary and Action Plan.

Price for open training course

• Full day of quality training
• Tea, coffee and cakes
• Lunch
• Full colour course notes
• Written action plan
• Certificate
• Additional training material by means of monthly updates
• Access to the Post Course Portal

Plus 3 months free telephone coaching

To answer any on-going questions, you will also receive email and telephone support from your trainer after you have attended the course. Whilst you are implementing what you have learned we will be there to help you if you need us for advice, guidance and coaching.

After the course, how can you to keep the training-momentum going?

We understand that it is important to keep the momentum of the training going, in the weeks after the course. The ideas and methods that you learnt during the course need to be implemented, not just for the two weeks after the course, but for all time!

In order to make that happen, we will give you continued, on-going support after the training course has finished. The support comes in the form of the Post Course Portal.

The Post Course Portal is a web page that contains a review of all the course material, plus the following:

• Newsletters containing training blogs and articles, which will provide you with ongoing training and good ideas, whenever you need them.
• Fun questionnaires that are designed to tease out your strengths and weaknesses and then give you ideas as to how you might improve your performance.
• Decision matrices that will allow you to make decisions and prioritise tasks into the correct order.
• Summary diagrams and mind maps from the course.
• Conflict scripts that give you examples of how the conflict method can be used, in real life situations.
• Free eBook the effective leader manager.

Price for in house training course

In House Course: from £1,850 +VAT per day (international training price varies) for up to 20 delegates

Please call us on +44 020 3856 3008 to discuss your requirements for the in house training course.

If you want to know more about any Management Training Course or their suitability for you or a colleague call us on +44 020 3856 3008.