for educators and health professionals
How To Have Great Staff Meetings
Meetings are an essential tool for establishing communication links in organisations and for enabling decisions to be made and acted upon. They are often dreaded and ineffective. Too many meetings are too long, with unclear, fuzzy objectives. Effective preparation, drafting a clear agenda, and control are essential. The chair has a vital role to ensure a meeting's success.
Chairing is both a science and an art. It is all about exercising authority including directing the course of the business, respecting people’s contributions, ensuring fair play and being able to summarise points made and decisions taken. It goes without saying the chair requires great people skills. Furthermore, chairing meetings calls for technical abilities as well. Depending on the nature of the meeting, it is important for the chair to know the rules of procedure, standing orders and how to apply these.
Participants need to prepared, willing to be interested and polite and follow up on tasks assigned to them.
Objectives
At the conclusion of the programme, participants should be able to:
- Describe the role of the chairman in running meetings distinct from that of other members
- Identify rules and protocols in meetings
- Examine the relationship between the chair and other members of the meeting
- Identify different roles participants play: movers, directors, harmonisers, the silent, the wreckers, the talkers
Outline of Programme
Participants are introduced to a broad range of subjects drawing on:
- Purpose of meeting
- The role and responsibilities of the chair
- Planning and preparing the meeting
- Working with the meetings secretary
- Key skills for the chair including listening, summarising, getting the ‘feel’ of the meeting, moving towards a decision
- Encouraging active participation: a quick introduction to the human zoo - understanding people in groups
- Coping with log rollers, zappers, hidden agendas and other “gotchas” of meetings
Who should attend? - As a participant who are you representing and what are your responsibilities to the chair?
- Stating your case
- Post meeting: who needs to know?
