Productive Meetings is Not an Oxymoron:
Meeting Skills for Committees and Teams

Esprit de corps can be yours!

Eleven million meetings are held in the U. S. each year, and the average executive spends 3½ hours weekly in formal meetings.  Many of us spend half of our business day in formal or informal meetings.  Meetings are an intensive way of involving others in solving problems and making decisions.  We know that involving  others in the process of solving a problem is the best way to get "buy- in" to the solution.  Meetings  also provide an  opportunity to come together to share information, plan, criticize, or praise, or find out what went wrong with previous meetings.  Meetings also create the possibility for each group member to experience optimum success and goal achievement. So there are many positive outcomes for meetings IF they are effective meetings. Not all meetings are effective, but they can be if you learn the simple-to-use methods provided by Patti Wood.

This program uses the Myers Briggs Personality Test and notes from studies performed on meetings. 

Objectives:
At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Practice eight effective and creative methods for opening and closing a meeting
• Explain why meetings are important
• State the similarities and differences between traditional and team meetings
• Identify problem meeting situations and possible prevention techniques and solutions
• Recognize how members' similarities and uniquenesses affect meeting dynamics
• Use logistics and notification for successful meeting preparation
• Implement effective agenda-setting, following up, interviewing, and other time managing techniques
• Develop, set, and follow ground rules
• Run or follow the guidelines of an “issue bank”
• Use five effective planning, solution-generating, problem solving techniques, including mind mapping, cubing, Benjamin Franklin Method, sticky web, and nominal group
• Identify the various roles that people assume in meetings and how those roles support or inhibit the meeting process.
• Understand why some people check out and don’t contribute, while others criticize or hog the floor—and how you can get and maintain positive involvement.
• Deal with difficult meeting members (the endless talkers, the idea squelchers, the complainers, the quiet types, etc.)
• Identify the differences between command, consultative, and consensus decision-making approaches, the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, and the circumstances under which each is appropriate
• Practice leadership models and facilitation methods
• Understand what squelches creativity
• Harness the power of silence
• Follow the proper steps for introducing an exercise or interaction method
• Be a good facilitator
• Be a good group member
• Deal with problem participants
• Follow the rules for group negotiation and consensus
• Use two methods for diagnosing and evaluating meeting effectiveness

   Learning Approach  

• Learning objectives are clearly defined throughout the program so participants know what they will be learning at each step, as well as what they will be able to do when they complete the program. 
• Concepts and skills are built from the preview interviews and surveys where participants provide diagnostic information on how their organization currently operates.  Group members will develop a description of how they would like meetings to be run.
• Participants will access their individual personalities and the group's personality with a Myers Briggs temperament sorter pretest.
• Active participation is ensured for each participant through small group ground rules of trust and self-disclosure, frequent opportunities to respond, and structured interaction with other participants.
• Performance is evaluated immediately. At each step, participants know whether they are learning appropriately.
• Learning is gradually transferred, initially from one program activity to the next and ultimately to the participants’ actual work situations. Real-life examples and problems are used in the exercises. Participants first use the concepts and skills they acquired in a carefully structured, protected environment, and then apply those concepts and skills to their own jobs.
• Utility, application, and further transfer of the material is assured by comprehensive closure tools requiring participants to complete a meeting agenda and a two-page personal action plan, and the arrange to meet with their support partner. Finally, the team facilitator randomly calls some participants during the following two weeks.
• Patti uses humor and fun exercises to keep the program lively, create positive energy, and allow for input after serious exercises.

“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’d understood all your life, but in a new way.” Doris Lessing

Myers Briggs evaluation will be used in this program. 

 “Time Waster Profiles” And  “Time Wasted In Meetings” From R. Alec Mackenzie’s “New Time Management Methods”.