Meetings Management

What's it all about?

Meetings constitute an essential and often significant proportion of a Manager's workload. To be effective, meetings need to be both results focused (i.e. the purpose of the meeting and its outcomes need to be achieved) and completed in the least time necessary.  This practical programme will cover the skills needed to ensure that your meetings are managed effectively whilst simultaneously spending less time in them! The programme will focus on the process of meetings management as well how to handle the people and time in order to produce real, measurable results. It also looks at behavioural issues to explain why meetings can be unproductive and overly long, with practical measures to remedy this.

Who is it for?

• Anyone who participates at meetings, either as chair or as a participant.
• People who want to improve the effectiveness of meetings they attend
• Anyone who wishes to claw time back that is taken up by long and / or unproductive meetings.

Timings

1 day – no pre work required.

Costs

Based on a group of up to 10 people the cost would be £1200.00 plus VAT. This includes all materials, but excludes expenses and accommodation costs.

Content

• Meetings - why have them?  What can go wrong?
• Ideal meetings vs reality.  How meetings fit into a managers workload.
• Is a meeting always necessary?  Reasons for and against meeting.
• Key principle of 'Purpose, Outcomes and Agenda'
• Setting up and preparing for a meeting
• Determining who really should be there and what to include on the agenda.
• Key techniques for the 'chair' guiding the discussion, managing the contributors, focusing energy.
• An alternative to minutes that will be acted upon and are ready in a jiffy!
• Dealing with difficult issues and difficult participants - understanding their motivation.

What you'll get out of it

• 10 ways in which your meetings (both as chair and attendee) can be improved
• Proactive measures to make these improvements happen
• Full understanding of the behaviours of meeting participants - why they do what they do
• Techniques for preparing a meeting which you are to lead in the minimum time and with maximum impact
• An awareness of the barriers to an effective meetings and enhanced communication skills to overcome them
• Greater understanding of the significance of verbal and non-verbal communication during a meeting
• 5 ways to make meetings shorter and more productive