Facilitating Work Groups and Meetings


Overview/Description
Target Audience
Expected Duration
Lesson Objectives
Course Number


Overview/Description
This situation is probably familiar. You dread holding a meeting so much that you have butterflies in your stomach. People turning up whenever they choose to. Trying to get everyone to agree or make a decision takes hours of discussion. No one is willing to take responsibility for action items. In this course, you will learn to avoid these and other pitfalls of work groups so that you can approach your meetings without dread. You will start by identifying different types of groups: internal, external, ongoing, single-purpose and their characteristics. By knowing whom you are going to be facilitating and the inherent group characteristics, you will be able to prepare for the meeting, establishing clear expectations and a realistic agenda. You can also determine if you are a match for this assignment, or if it would be better to find someone else. You will learn techniques to start and end meetings for groups of various sizes and purpose. By learning why, when and how to intervene in meetings, you will establish ways to get groups to work through the problem-solving process so they can agree and make sustainable agreements and decisions. You will finish this course by learning how to end meetings and, with action items assigned, everyone knowing what the meeting accomplished and what they need to do next.

Target Audience
Managers, team leaders or anyone who will conduct/lead meetings or workgroups.

Expected Duration (hours)
4.0

Lesson Objectives

Preparation

  • recognise the value of preparing for work groups and meetings.
  • apply the principles of effective contract negotiating to example scenarios.
  • arrange in sequence the process of creating an effective, mission-based agenda.
  • identify the principles of meeting room arrangement.

    • The Meeting Process

  • recognise the significance of having an effective meeting structure.
  • identify the components of effective facilitation that need to be addressed at the beginning of every meeting.
  • differentiate between effective and ineffective intervention.
  • identify how to end meetings of various sizes and types.

    • Initialising Work Group Problem-solving

  • recognise the value of the problem-solving process as it applies to work groups and meetings.
  • differentiate the either/or mindset from the both/and mindset as it relates to effective problem-solving.
  • specify ways to define problems and establish criteria for evaluating solutions.
  • identify the steps involved in determining the real causes of problems to be solved.

    • Achieving Sustainable Agreements

  • recognise the importance of achieving sustainable agreements in work groups.
  • identify issues of facilitated group decision-making.
  • identify principles for setting decision-making rules.
  • identify methods to help participants see problems from a common perspective.
  • identify techniques for cultivating inclusive solutions.
  • identify ways to create closure through sustainable agreements.

    • Course Number:
    MGMT8233