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Effective Meeting Skills

The Difference:

On average, professionals spend twenty-five percent of their time in meetings. They consider fifty percent of the meeting time to be ineffective. There are several models and processes available for allowing a group to achieve the meeting objectives within a given time frame and with full participation. Effective Meeting Skills provides participants with an opportunity to learn the models and to enhance their meeting skills based upon use of the appropriate model and processes. Most of these models are quite new to American businesses and are not offered by other training programs.

Course Description:

Effective Meeting Skills is designed to provide participants with knowledge, skills and tools that they can use to assure their future leadership and participation in effective meetings. The definition of effectiveness includes: task accomplishment, clear objectives accepted by members, trust and openness, maximum use of member resources, adequate decision making processes and mechanisms for feedback.

Course Objectives:

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Understand the dimensions of effective meetings. Most business people clearly understand what hinders a meeting's effectiveness but they are not aware of specific competencies required to avoid or deal with these hindrances. Using a series of situations and a carefully designed checklist, participants identify specific productivity factors required for effectiveness.
• Utilize course tools to plan and facilitate effective meetings. Many meeting problems are due to a lack of planning on the part of the meeting facilitator and meeting attendees. Participants receive specific tools to ensure that their meetings are planned and structured to achieve the acknowledged objectives.
• Anticipate and handle meeting challenges effectively. Participants practice utilizing skills and control processes which allow them to achieve and maintain a meeting atmosphere which permits creative idea generation and objective accomplishment.
• Ensure proper meeting closure and follow-up. A common complaint in many companies is that individuals fail to "do what they agreed to" after a meeting, resulting in more meetings and loss of productive time. Participants receive specific strategies designed to ensure commitment and follow-up.

Course Content:

Effective Meeting Skills consists of three modules:

• Planning
• Execution
• Follow-up

Course Design:

Effective Meeting Skills is designed to provide awareness and skill enhancement. It consists of interactive lecture, large and small group exercises, a case study and individual pre- and post- evaluation.

Highlights include:

• Audience range of twelve to twenty participants
• Participant feedback
• Delivery option of three, three-hour sessions or a one-day (eight hour) session
• Tested meeting tools

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