TRAINING
Leading effective meetings training
Equip your teams with the skills, techniques, and confidence needed to lead meetings that get results
OVERVIEW
Leading effective meetings: training for managers and team leaders
The team at Further includes some of the most experienced specialists in leadership communication in the UK, with backgrounds spanning executive coaching, NHS leadership development and organisational change.
All of this expertise has helped to form this tailored, full-day training programme. It is designed to give your managers and team leaders the skills, structures and practical confidence to lead meetings that are purposeful, properly inclusive and effective.
THE COST OF INEFFECTIVE MEETINGS
Many organisations spend enormous amounts of time in meetings that do not achieve their goals
Meetings are one of the most significant investments of time and attention that an organisation makes.
But when meetings work badly, they drain energy, create confusion and quietly accumulate into one of the biggest productivity losses that any business can experience. (Sound familiar?!)
Ineffective meetings are rarely the result of bad intentions. Most managers want to run good meetings! What they often lack is a clear structure for doing so, the facilitation skills to bring everyone into the conversation productively, and the confidence to manage the moments when meetings go off track. This training addresses all three.
Contact us about effective meetings training for your team
EXPERTS
Who delivers the Running Effective Meetings training at Further?
Faye is qualified in Executive Coaching, Healthcare Leadership Model 360 facilitation and TypeCoach and holds a PG Diploma in Management.
Faye is also a trained Action Learning Set facilitator, which means she brings a sophisticated understanding of group dynamics, participation and facilitation to every session she delivers.
THE PROGRAMME
A full day of practical training: here is what it covers
The day runs for approximately six hours and can be delivered in person or online, depending on what works best for your team. It is structured as a progressive learning journey, with participants practising the skills they are learning throughout the day rather than waiting until the end. Every module is grounded in real meeting scenarios from your organisation.
1. Purpose, design and agenda
The day begins with the most fundamental question in meeting leadership: why does this meeting need to happen? Participants learn how to design meetings with a clear, specific purpose and how to build an agenda that genuinely serves that purpose rather than simply filling the time.
2. Facilitation skills and inclusive discussion
Effective meetings do not manage themselves. This module gives participants a toolkit of facilitation techniques for drawing in quieter voices, managing dominant ones, encouraging genuine dialogue and maintaining direction without closing down valuable thinking. Practical exercises throughout give participants the experience of facilitating a discussion and receiving expert feedback in a safe environment.
3. Managing time, pace and energy
Great time management in meetings is about understanding how energy in a room changes over time and adjusting the facilitation approach accordingly. Participants learn practical techniques for keeping meetings on track, handling tangents and knowing when to draw a conversation to a close in a way that feels complete rather than cut off.
4. Navigating difficult moments and meeting participants
Even well-planned meetings encounter difficult moments such as the dominant contributor who takes over, the sceptic who challenges every point or the moment when a conversation becomes heated or goes somewhere unexpected. This module gives participants the skills and the confidence to navigate these moments constructively, keeping the meeting and the relationships in the room on course.
5. Outcomes, actions and follow-up
A meeting without clear follow-up is a conversation. This module covers how to summarise what has been discussed and decided in a way that everyone in the room agrees with, how to assign actions with genuine ownership and realistic deadlines, and how to follow up in a way that maintains accountability without becoming a burden.
6. Live meeting practice
The session finishes with participants leading a live meeting scenario built around a real challenge from their organisation, applying everything from the day in an observed and supported environment. Faye provides detailed individual feedback and the group reflects together on what worked and what they would do differently.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
What your managers will be able to do after this training
By the end of the day, every participant will have the knowledge, the frameworks and the hands-on practice to apply these skills in the changes they are currently leading.
- Design and structure meetings with a clear purpose and measurable outcomes so that every meeting has a genuine reason to exist
- Prepare and communicate clear agendas and objectives so that all participants know what to expect, what to contribute and why they have been invited
- Facilitate inclusive discussions that draw in different personality types and encourage balanced participation rather than domination by the most confident voices
- Use facilitation techniques to guide conversations productively, balancing openness with direction and keeping discussion on track without shutting down valuable thinking
- Manage time and pace so that meetings remain focused and efficient without sacrificing the quality of the conversation
- Navigate difficult moments and challenging participants, keeping the meeting constructive and the energy in the room positive
- Summarise outcomes clearly and define follow-up actions with named ownership and agreed deadlines so that meetings lead to actual change
- Build a meeting culture where participants feel heard, respected and genuinely motivated to contribute
- Reflect on what works and what does not after each meeting, so that every meeting run becomes an opportunity to improve the next one
THE CHALLENGE
This training works particularly well when...
This leading effective meetings training has proven to be a good fit for organisations where one or more of the following is true. Is this you...?
- Your managers run a lot of meetings but have never had any formal training in how to facilitate them well.
- Meetings in your organisation consistently overrun, drift from their purpose or end without clear outcomes and agreed next steps.
- The same voices dominate every meeting while others contribute little, and the quality of collective thinking suffers as a result.
- People attend meetings without really knowing why they are there or what is expected of them, and leave without a clear sense of what was decided.
- There is a culture of too many meetings, or meetings that could easily have been an email, and you want to change that.
- You want to build a meeting culture that is more focused, more energising and more consistently productive across the organisation.
GOING FURTHER
What additional support will your people receive?
Following the training, all participants will receive follow-up notes and feedback, a personal online coaching session and access to our full library of communication skills resources.
This additional support is all focused on ensuring that the new skills that your team discover during the training are successfully applied in practice within their roles.
RESULTS
How is the success of the training measured?
We measure the confidence and competence of all learners before, during and after the training session.
The results are recorded, analysed and presented to you in an easy-to-read report.
Our goal is to ensure that all of the training that we deliver is as effective as possible and that you can clearly demonstrate the impact that your learning and development budget has achieved.
