What is this course about?

Business meetings and discussions dominate the way organisations do business today. Interactions between employees, business partners, and between management and staff are critical to business functioning, competitiveness and growth. In this course, you learn how to facilitate goal-oriented results through planning, collaboration, consensus and mutual cooperation, creating lasting change and tangible growth at all levels of the organisation.

Will this course help me better manage workplace meetings?

Absolutely! Meetings are how you stay informed and are a vital part of an organisation's decision-making process. However, for many, meetings can be meaningless, leading to interpersonal conflict, and frequently equate to wasted time. In this course, you gain the facilitation skills proven to dramatically increase productivity, produce better plans, make smarter decisions and derive high-quality information from all your business meetings.

What kinds of meetings will this course help me facilitate?

The skills provided in this course are applicable to all business meetings and discussions, including joint application development meetings, business analysis meetings, project team discussions and meetings for developing business requirements. This course is also applicable to virtual meetings and conference calls and even to brief interactions in front of the water cooler. All business interactions will improve by applying the skills in this course.

Who will benefit from this course?

Leaders, managers, supervisors and anyone who wants to improve team performance as well as those who are intent on increasing their professional effectiveness and personal job satisfaction.

How is this course structured?

This course is structured around a dynamic style of learning created by Learning Tree called RealityPlus^TM - an immersive experience that engages you in authentic tasks within a simulated real-world context. Through a media-rich case study, role playing, and video and computer-based activities, you are immersed throughout the course in an evolving scenario where the decisions you make affect the outcome of the simulation.

The RealityPlus learning method is presented in a safe environment where you gain new skills and practice the most effective techniques to bring back to your job. At the end of your course, you are prepared to immediately and successfully apply these new skills within your organisation!

What background do I need?

No specific background is required.

Will this course give me more confidence to make presentations during meetings?

Yes. This course focuses on developing confidence in facilitating meetings and business discussions. By learning and applying effective facilitation skills aimed at creating goal-oriented results, you will improve your ability to manage a meeting and reduce the jitteriness that typically accompanies facilitating any group event. To further develop your presentations skills, you may be interested in Course 345, Delivering Dynamic Presentations or Course 903, Public Speaking: Conveying Your Message with Confidence.

Is it really possible to reach consensus in meetings? Isn't conflict inevitable?

While conflict can often occur during meetings and business discussions, it is absolutely possible to achieve consensus. You will learn techniques in building consensus and resolving various levels of disagreement in any situation, to produce better meeting outcomes and do so more quickly.

How much time is spent on each topic?

How much of this course is spent in activities?

Approximately 70 percent of class time is spent engaged in immersive activities. Specific activities include:

• Assessing personal facilitation skills and characteristics
• Remaining calm in heated situations
• Facilitating to consensus
• Planning a facilitated meeting
• Asking the right one-meeting questions
• Creating empathy through active listening
• Turning group responses into facilitative questions
• Identifying disagreement levels and applying consensus tools
• Defining and resolving problem attendee behaviors

Will this course help me prepare for the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) certification?

This course is not aligned with the IAF certification, or any other facilitator certification. However, the skills gained are applicable to the IAF certification and will help you in preparing for the certification.

Is this course applicable toward a Project Management Institute (PMI) certification?

Yes. Though this course is not designed as preparation for an exam, it is beneficial to anyone working toward, or maintaining, a PMI certification. Most PMI certifications require a specific number of PDUs in order to obtain and maintain the credential. Completion of this course provides 17 professional development units (PDUs).

Learning Tree offers several courses that help you prepare for PMI certifications, including Course 276, Preparing for the Project Management Professional (PMP)^® Exam, which prepares you for PMI's most popular certification. For more details on these courses and PMI certifications, please see the Learning Tree PMI Registered Education Provider Q&A.

How does this course relate to other Learning Tree courses?

The following Learning Tree courses may be of interest to you:

• In Course 904, Responding to Conflict: Creating Resolution and Cooperation, you gain the skills to effectively handle conflict using a powerful conflict resolution method.
• Course 294, Influence Skills: Getting Results without Direct Authority, offers the knowledge and skills to apply influence strategies to gain commitment from others and foster collaboration.
• In Course 284, Critical Thinking and Creative Problem Solving, you gain the skills to make better decisions through critical thinking and creative problem solving.
• Course 341, Negotiation Skills for Tough Situations: Tools and Techniques That Deliver Results, provides the skills to conduct principled negotiations that result in wise agreements.
• Course 292, Communication Skills: Results through Collaboration, offers the skills to achieve results in your communication with others.
• In Course 275, Leading Virtual and Remote Teams, you acquire the real-world working skills to deliver results across multisite and multinational environments.

You may also be interested in the following courses:

• Course 244, Assertiveness Skills: Communicating with Authority and Impact
• Course 345, Delivering Dynamic Presentations
• Course 344, Time Management Essentials
• Course 902, IT Relationship Management: Aligning IT with the Business
• Course 222, Leadership Skills: Building Success through Teamwork
• Course 346, Project Leadership: Building High-Performance Teams
• Course 315, Developing User Requirements: The Key to Project Success
• Course 296, Project Management: Skills for Success
• Course 340, Project Management for Software Development

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