Personal Efficiency and Managing Meetings Training Course

Understanding Ourselves and Others

• Recognizing that inviting others to a meeting imposes your priority list on their schedule
• Exploring the factors that influence our behavior
• Evaluating our awareness of how our actions impact others: Do people always respond as desired or expected? If not, why?

The Process for Managing Meetings

• Assessing whether a meeting is truly necessary and identifying preferable alternatives
• Implementing the standard process for calling, managing, and preparing meetings:
• Drafting a meaningful agenda that outlines objectives, topics, and suggested timings
• Inviting only essential participants—no one else
• Facilitating the meeting: encouraging relevant contributions while distinguishing them from irrelevant ones; adhering to the agenda and time limits
• Generating outputs: not necessarily full minutes, but clear action points
• Scheduling necessary follow-up meetings

Attending Meetings

• Determining whether attendance is required for every invited meeting
• Establishing criteria for deciding whether to accept or decline meeting invitations
• Identifying valid justifications for declining an invitation
• Understanding appropriate activities during meetings, considering attendee roles, discussion topics, and time allocations

Other Personal Efficiency and Time Management Issues

• Setting and adhering to personal and professional objectives
• Work Prioritization:
• Deciding which tasks need immediate attention
• Establishing the order in which to tackle these activities
• Employee-Imposed Time: Assessing whether staff and colleagues are working for you, or if you are working for them...
• Time Bandits: Identifying other time drains and strategies to mitigate them:
• Emails
• Telephone calls
• Unplanned interruptions
• Displacement activities, such as procrastination...
• Other potential distractions
• Effective Delegation
• Assertiveness: Learning to seek compromise and effectively say "no"