Meetings eat up a large percentage of an average employee's workday, yet often little is done to manage this important expenditure of time and resources.

Good meeting skills are essential for any collaborative effort; they enable employees to make decisions efficiently and respond more quickly to fast-changing demands.

Since 1969, Interaction Associates has conducted research and collected data from hundreds of consulting engagements to develop a methodology for successful meetings.

The result is Mastering Meetings™, a highly experiential workshop in which participants address the most common barriers to meeting effectiveness and learn skills and strategies to run meetings that are shorter, more focused, and yield tangible outcomes.

Who should attend

The workshop is designed for people who spend more than 10% of their time in meetings, including:

• Meeting leaders
• Meeting participants
• Meeting facilitators

Benefits for participants

During the basic one-day workshop, participants acquire the skills to improve each stage of a meeting — setting up, conducting, and following through.

Participants will learn to:

• Keep meetings focused and on track
• Encourage everyone to participate
• Create effective action plans
• Leverage the time and energy of people in the room

The two-day Mastering Meetings™ workshop tackles specific issues and provides additional practice. The two-day option focuses on problem-solving, handling conflict and difficult behaviors, and building consensus decisions.

Benefits for the organization

Improving the quality of meetings produces a ripple effect throughout an organization: higher levels of productivity, involvement, and employee satisfaction. At the core of Mastering Meetings™ is The Interaction Method™, a facilitated approach for building understanding and agreement that has helped organizations:

• Reduce cycle time in meeting customer demands
• Make cross-functional decisions faster and more efficiently
• Accelerate the implementation of large-scale change efforts (such as reengineering, quality- and team-based initiatives)

How participants learn

More than 50 percent of class time is devoted to practice, including individual coaching and feedback from workshop leaders. All workshop content focuses on real-life problems, so that learning is immediately transferable back on the job. Workshop leaders can also customize short presentations to meet the specific needs of the class.