Personal Efficiency and Managing Meetings Training Course

Self-Awareness and Understanding Others

• Recognizing that inviting others to a meeting imposes our priorities on them
• Exploring what drives our behavior
• Assessing how our actions impact others: do they always respond as we expect or should they? If not, why?

Meeting Management Process

• Assessing the necessity of a meeting; exploring alternatives and determining if they are preferable
• The end-to-end process for scheduling, managing, and preparing for meetings:
  • Drafting a meaningful agenda that outlines objectives, key topics, and suggested timings
  • Inviting only relevant participants
  • Facilitating the meeting: encouraging relevant contributions (while distinguishing them from irrelevant ones), staying on agenda, and adhering to time limits
  • Generating clear outcomes: not necessarily detailed minutes, but at minimum, defined action points
  • Scheduling necessary follow-ups

Attending Meetings

• Evaluating whether attendance is truly required for every invitation
• Developing criteria for deciding whether to attend
• Identifying valid reasons for declining invitations
• Understanding appropriate conduct during meetings regarding participants, discussion topics, and timing

Other Personal Efficiency and Time Management Topics

• Setting and adhering to personal and professional objectives
• Work Prioritization
  • Determining what needs to be done
  • Prioritizing these tasks effectively
• Employee-Imposed Time: analyzing whether staff and colleagues are working for you or vice versa
• Time Wasters: identifying other factors that steal your time and strategies to address them
  • Emails
  • Telephone calls
  • Unplanned interruptions
  • Displacement activities: such as procrastination
  • Other distractions
• Effective Delegation
• Assertiveness: learning how to seek compromises and say “no” effectively