The Art of Running Effective Meetings

Session Title:      So you want to be a professional cat-herder?  The art of the effective meeting

Objectives Statement:

Above all, an effective Project Leader needs to be expert at managing people and personalities.  In this session, we’ll work with the most common scenario where stakeholder management is a must:  the meeting.  We’ll cover the ‘whys and whens’ of meetings, structure and engagement, managing personalities and situations and creating a cycle of accomplishment.

Agenda:

08:30 – Sign-in

09:00 – Introductions and the “Why”

09:15 – 10:00 – Structure and Purpose – ensure your meetings are effective

This section is about setting up a meeting and providing good organization so that a meeting will flow successfully and be productive

10:00 – 10:45 – Keys to executing an effective meeting

Topics in this section include aligning on objectives and outcomes, roles and responsibilities in the meeting, creating engagement and contribution among participants and ensuring “relevance”

10:45-12:00 – Active Session – Managing Difficult Behaviors and Situations

This is a “hands-on” session to help students identify and mitigate difficult personalities and situations.

12:00 – 13:00 – Lunch

13:00 – 13:45 – Cultivating and maintaining strong ongoing relationships

This session stresses the importance of networking and maintaining relationships in the organization and why this is a huge contributor to successful meetings.

13:45 – 14:30 – Unique Venues and Stakeholders and considerations

While the focus of the workshop is a “traditional meeting” we’ll talk about other types of gatherings including executive presentations, auditoriums, etc. and some things to keep in mind

14:30 – 14:45 – Break

14:45 – 15:30 – Zoom and online meetings…..

COVID will ensure that online meetings are here to stay.  This session is half open discussion with the students and half observations about ways to make online meetings more effective

15:30 – 16:45 – Active Session – Commitment and Follow-thru.  Creating a cycle of accomplishment

The final hands-on session will focus on how to use agenda-minutes to create a cycle of accomplishment, establish continuity of tasks and follow throughs and techniques to ensure follow through on Action Items.

16:45 – Session End