Effective Meeting Management and Facilitation
Too many meetings? Endless discussion? Constant lack of agreement? With the growing number of virtual meetings, making real progress is even more challenging. Facilitating consensus across a group of professionals is a critical requirement to any project’s success.
In this program, you will learn techniques and tools to effectively run information-gathering sessions, detect and address hidden agendas, gain team alignment, and drive decision making whether in person or in a virtual meeting environment. You will also learn how to avoid common pitfalls, address difficult meeting participants. and minimize technical meeting challenges.
Who Should Attend
New and experienced business analysts and project managers, program managers, general managers and supervisors that lead and facilitate group meetings, project team leaders, and technical team members who are asked to provide their advice or give recommendations for solutions to projects.
This program is also offered online. Learn More »
NOTE to Business Analysis Certificate Participants: If you took the program “Stakeholder Management: Communication Through the Requirements Process,” you do not need to take this program.
Continuing Education Units
This course provides 1.4 Continuing Education Units (CEUs)
How You Will Benefit
- Decrease the number of ineffective meetings
- Reduce the time it takes to capture project needs and requirements
- Achieve group consensus quicker
- Better identify assumed or unspoken needs and requirements
- Learn techniques for handling participants that disrupt, hijack, or take groups off target in meetings
- Empower groups to be accountable and responsible for agreed upon activities
- Develop focus and excitement for new or ongoing initiatives
- Better understand the different techniques needed for one-to-one, small group, and large group environments
SHRM Preferred Provider
The Center for Professional and Executive Development is a Preferred Provider with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
2-Day Agenda
Introduction
- Course, classroom, online, and building resources
- Identifying facilitation challenges of the class group
Facilitation and Trusted Advisor Frameworks
- Client relationship models
- Developing and strengthening trust with your group
Effective Meeting Management
- Meeting type considerations
- Building useful meeting agendas
- Six areas of focus for more effective meetings
Group Exercise: Building an Effective Agenda and Using it to Manage a Meeting
Facilitation Concepts
- Techniques to build consensus
- Approaches for managing group conflict
- Generating and refining new ideas
- Six common facilitation meeting types
- 16 facilitation techniques
Working Toward Consensus
- Eight common consensus making tools
- Managing expectations
- Creating artifacts and documentation from the facilitation session
- Ensuring sustainable agreements
Group Simulation: Facilitation with Difficult Stakeholders
Group Simulation: Facilitation with Entrenched Groups
Group Simulation: Facilitation with No Clear and Obvious Solution
Tom Westcott
Tom has experience in project management, product development, enterprise project management, organizational management, IT training, and IT systems implementation.
He founded and served as CEO of Project Solutions Group, a project management and training consultancy. His clients have included Microsoft, Amica, Bausch & Lomb, CSC, L-3 Communications, General Dynamics, Pitney Bowes, the State of Rhode Island, TJX, Yankee Candle Co., St. Francis College, and the Architect of the Capitol.
Tom also served as director of staff development for Akibia. Before joining Akibia, Tom worked as a consultant and project manager for Cambridge Technology Partners, where he managed large-scale system and application rollout projects for companies such as Lucent Technologies, ADP, and Mutual of New York.
Tom attended Brooklyn College and MIT, and he is an active member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and a certified project management professional (PMP).
Daily Schedule
Program: 8:15 a.m.-5 p.m.
Lunch and Breaks are Included with Program Registration
Program Check-In will be 7:30-8:15 a.m. on the first day of the program.