Psychology for Success writes:
They want meetings to be more efficient, effective and with agreed outcomes that are then followed through. Inefficient meetings are being recognised widely as causing a huge loss of resources in businesses.
Traditional training is likely to approach this by offering employees a training session which tells people how to invite people to meetings, set up an agenda, facilitate the meeting, write good notes and delegate tasks, following up after a meeting.
However, we know through experience that when we ask people if they know how to do all of these things they agree that they do. But they don’t do it!
So we asked the questions “What’s Going On? What issues are getting in the way of meetings being as you would want them to be?” An approach supported in quote below.
“Wasted time in meetings is something which most of us can identify with, but when this is seen in the context of UK GDP, the drain on productivity that ineffective meetings have is really put in perspective. The good thing is there are lots of things which businesses can do to address time wasted, starting by asking staff about their main bugbears in company meetings. Senior managers can then use this feedback to identify appropriate practical steps such as introducing structured agendas, supplying more appropriate AV technology or even providing more refreshments to set their staff on course for a more productive use of their time in meetings.” Neil Colquhoun, Business Sales Director from Epson UK.
Once we had helped each organisation identify the issues getting in the way we were able to group them into areas that needed to be addressed. In all companies that we have worked with, a very high percentage of issues have been grouped by the participants into “Culture” with a recognition that their company culture is supporting poor meeting practice. It is just ‘the way things are done around here’.
So before you rush into spending money on training meeting skills, ask yourselves “Do they really not know what to do or are they just NOT doing it?”. Finding out ‘why’ is the key to more effective meetings.
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