Planning and Leading Productive Meetings

Planning and Leading Productive Meetings focuses on the organizational and interpersonal skills you will need to lead highly productive meetings. You will see how these skills apply to routine staff meetings, cross-functional or problem-solving meetings, impromptu get-togethers, and more formal information sharing.

Despite new ways of working and virtual ways of communicating, the traditional meeting continues to dominate the workplace. Planning and Leading Productive Meetings addresses the meeting challenges of this new work environment, and offers both leaders and participants an abundance of tools and techniques to transform their meetings into valuable and productive work.

You’ll learn how to assess the quality of meetings in your organization so you can understand their true cost. The benefits of successful meetings are better decision-making, broader buy-in, and clear conflict and problem resolution. In short, more effective meetings make your organization more productive!

This course gives substantial attention to the key role of the meeting leader, offering practical guidance on how to develop the proper mindset, manage the process, and use the best decision-making tools and facilitation skills. It also covers in full detail the dynamic issues of planning, conducting, follow-up, and meeting evaluation, with special attention paid to group dynamics and the effective use of media tools.

Topics Covered:

• What Meetings Can Accomplish
• Staff Meetings, Project Teams, Cross-Departmental Meetings, Problem-Solving Meetings, Information Sharing, Combination Meetings, and Impromptu Meetings
• Meeting Challenges for the 21st Century
• What Is the Quality of Meetings in Your Organization?
• The True Cost of Meetings
• An Expensive Resource
• How to Decide if a Meeting is Necessary
• Preparing to Be the Meeting Leader
• Preparing for a Meeting
• Conducting the Meeting
• Effective Decision-Making in Meetings
• Guidelines for Gaining Consensus
• Facilitation Skills Every Meeting Leader Must Have
• How to Handle a Challenging Group
• Meeting Follow-Up and Action Planning
• Effective Uses of Media

About the Author

Jeffery H. Davis is the founder and owner of Organization Renewal Associates, a consulting and training company in Littleton, Massachusetts that specializes in improving workplace communication, coaching and teamwork, and other means of achieving organizational effectiveness. He is also affiliated with the University of Massachusetts, Donahue Institute, serving state government and other public sector organizations with state-of-the-art training and consulting.