We want to help you avoid this👇
A 2019 study by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) found that UK businesses waste an average of 6.5 hours per week per employee on unproductive meetings. This is equivalent to £10,000 per employee per year.
You are an expert in your field and people ask you to share it but you don't have facilitation expertise or training
You lead meetings and want to find more effective and varied ways to make them productive and useful
You hate wasting people's time with useless or unproductive meeting time
While many of these sessions have offered interesting concepts and theories, I often found it challenging to translate them into practical applications in my daily role.
However, the session I attended with Ben in March, titled "How to Run Productive Meetings and Workshops," stands out remarkably. This has been one of the most impactful training experiences I've had. The models, frameworks, and concepts presented were immediately applicable, and since then, I have successfully utilized them to conduct workshops, meetings, and kickoff events with my team. The confidence boost this has given me is invaluable.
Previously, I often wondered about the effectiveness of my presentations—questioning audience engagement and whether I achieved my goals. Now, thanks to Ben’s training, I feel equipped to lead engaging, interactive sessions with real-time feedback on our progress.
Ben is an exceptional communicator who adeptly listens to his audience and adapts his delivery to meet the session’s objectives. I highly recommend Ben as a facilitator and trainer for anyone looking to master the art of conducting effective meetings and deliver workshops that work!
Jason Gordon, Texthelp
We start by understanding why meetings or workshops are unproductive. What are the mistakes people make to lose the momentum, the room or let the outcome lose clarity?
Knowing what is wrong means we can put it right, with simple techniques to set up your meetings and workshops for success. Includes techniques for giving everyone a voice, managing energy levels and keeping the focus on outcomes.
Use what we have learnt to plan an upcoming meeting or workshop using a template you can take away and use every time for successful meetings and workshops.
Meetings and workshops are often unproductive, not because anyone tries to make them fail, often there are simple solutions to increase the chances of making sure you stay on track, hear from everyone and hit those outcomes with clear actions.
Define what the time together is for and more importantly who needs to be there. Don't invite people that don't need to be there and make sure everyone who has to be knows why they are.
Lecturing has a place, but your meeting or workshop should not be it. If you do have information to disseminate plan for an activity that gives people a simple way to reflect, review and feedback on it without you talking.
An agenda is a good start but when you ask people to "discuss with your partner" or "reflect on" or "list all the..." provide very clear instructions as to how you want them to do it.
People have lots to think about so reduce the load by making things easy. If you ask them to pair up, how can you make it really simple and not create awkward personal dynamics that slow things down?
Whether remote or in-person or even the dreaded hybrid, have resources to make your life easier. Timers to keep everything on track. Sticky notes to allow everyone to contribute and sticky dots to make decisions effectively.
The founder of Evolving Design, Ben is passionate about people's time together being productive, equitable and collaborative. He believes creativity is something everyone has when given the right conditions to feel psychologically safe.
With so many unproductive gatherings for teams and people, Ben created evolving design to put user-centric design skills in the hands of teams looking to create effective change together.
We are limiting the maximum number to 20 to make sure you get to network as well as gaining the best experience and lots of takeaways. Ideal is 10-20 people from your organisation or team that regularly lead meetings or workshops.
Yes. Drop us an email with your organisation details and for those that qualify there is a 30% discount for qualifying organisations.
We can come to your offices or work with you to arrange a venue. Alternatively we offer a remote version of the course that can be delivered over Google Meet or Zoom, even Teams if you ask nicely.
Please get in touch via info@evolvingdesign.co