Meetings Can Fly: Meeting Facilitation Skills Class

Meetings have a bad reputation as time-wasters, yet almost everyone can recall at least one meeting that was a good use of their time. "Meeting facilitation" is a method of running meetings to make effective use of everyone's time, ensuring each meeting is enjoyable but creates results. If your team would like to know how TeamTrainers facilitates meetings so effectively, both regular team meetings and large-scale events, let us share what we have learned with you. The half-day Meeting Facilitation Skills Class, taken from The SuddenTeams Program, is appropriate for groups and their managers and covers every step:

• Setting meeting goals.
• Considering ways other than a meeting to meet those goals.
• Choosing an efficient agenda format.
• Creating and enforcing time-saving meeting rules, such as:
• All members are equal.
• No side conversations.
• No cell phones, pagers, e-mailing, or instant messaging.
• One subject at a time.
• No decision without an action.
• Silence or absence equals consensus.
• Guiding discussions.
• Solving meeting problems.
• Creating useful meeting minutes or notes.
• Ensuring results through action items and follow-up.

Students practice creating an agenda, creating rules, reading and challenging body language, and leading discussions. We answer common meeting questions like, "Is answering a cell phone in a meeting okay?" (No, because it steals time from the other participants and tells them you consider them less important than the person on the phone).

To get started, download our free Meeting Agenda and Minutes Template for regular team meetings (a Microsoft Word file). As an example of the efficiency our meeting facilitation training imparts, note that we use the agenda file to create the meeting notes as well.

Though conducted at your preferred site and customized for your team's real-world issues, the per-person charge is usually less than you would pay for generic off-site training* and includes a student guide provided at cost. If you want to surprise people with the effectiveness of your meetings, contact TeamTrainers.

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*Trainer travel costs are charged for classes outside of the Raleigh, N.C., area.