Personal Efficiency and Managing Meetings Training Course

Self-Awareness and Understanding Others

• Acknowledging that requesting attendance imposes your specific priorities on others
• Exploring the factors that drive our behavior
• Reflecting on how our actions impact colleagues: Do they respond as we expect? If not, what is the root cause?

Meeting Management Workflow

• Evaluating the necessity of a meeting: What are the alternatives, and are they superior?
• The full cycle of organizing and conducting meetings:
  • Drafting a purposeful agenda that outlines objectives, topics, and time allocations
  • Selecting only the essential participants
  • Facilitating the session: Keeping discussions relevant (distinguishing between useful and off-topic), staying on agenda, and adhering to the schedule
  • Documenting results: Focusing on action items rather than just detailed minutes
  • Scheduling necessary follow-up sessions

Participating in Meetings

• Assessing whether you truly need to attend every invited session
• Criteria for deciding whether to join or decline a meeting
• Justifications for declining invitations when appropriate
• Permissions and boundaries regarding attendees, discussion topics, and time management during the session

Additional Productivity and Time Management Strategies

• Setting and maintaining personal and professional goals
• Task Prioritization
  • Determining what needs to be done
  • Ranking activities by importance
• Workplace Dynamics: Are your staff and colleagues serving your objectives, or are you working for them?
• Time Drains: Identifying what else consumes your time and strategies to address it:
  • Email communication
  • Phone calls
  • Unexpected interruptions
  • Procrastination and other displacement activities
  • Other distractions
• Delegating tasks effectively
• Practicing assertiveness: Finding compromises and learning to say "no" with confidence