Communication Skills

Meetings! Meetings!

Use to simulate a meeting. Watch participants practise their meeting skills and identify the gap between how meetings should work and how they often slide into little less than chaos. Two handouts provide all the tips participants need to improve their meetings back at work.


The Activity

Each participant represents one of six managers from a hotel chain about to attend a regular Monday morning management meeting to plan for the week ahead. Each has a Management Card listing current issues which individuals first prioritise.

The meeting starts and you, the Trainer, observe what happens during the next 45 minutes. Typical issues are: lack of agenda, mini-meetings taking place at the table, dominant individuals, too much time spent on minor issues, no chairperson etc. All this makes for a great Debrief and two handouts allow the learning to be consolidated.

Learning Benefits

  • highlights what is so often wrong with meetings
  • encourages discussion of how meetings at work can be improved
  • shows the importance of planning for meetings and setting an agenda – and keeping to it
  • stresses the need for a chairperson to control
  • the meeting
  • illustrates that everyone has a vital contribution and should be ‘brought in’ to the meeting.

Customer feedback

  • A stimulating activity which made all participants think again about their behaviour at meetings.

    – G. Skeens, Solomon Hare

  • An adaptable package, stimulating and beneficial to participants whether they hold or merely attend meetings.

    – C. Jeffries, Conoco Ltd

  • A useful and enjoyable exercise alllowing trainees to practise communication, assertiveness and leadership skills but also emphasising the importance of planned, structured and co-ordinated meetings.

    – K. Bertin, Harrods