How do you make sure everyone has a voice in your meeting, without succumbing to the old enemy, compromise, which leads to weak conclusions and lousy outcomes? This session will help wade through the complicated and frustrating world of meeting management.
Come prepared to practice! In this interactive session, you’ll learn:
- The Five Conflict Resolution Types, and How to Change Your Meeting to Get The Results You Need, No Matter Who’s in the Room
- How to Treat Your Colleagues Like Customers So You Can Make Them Want to Give You what You Want
- The Pre- and Post-Meeting Checklists You Need to Short Circuit the Endless, Pointless Meetings No One Ever Loves
Gone are the days when all it took to make a great meeting were some pizza, a few beverages, and a handful of sticky notes. Even when you’re working with a team of trusted colleagues, today’s pressure-packed, time-limited business environment can turn the simplest meeting into a pressure cooker. Product managers spend a lot of time learning how to listen to the voice of the customer, use empathy as a superpower, and entice, beg, or cajole their colleagues to get back on the roadmap. But the flood of pressure for everyone to be listening to customers, has meant that each participant also feels responsible if something goes wrong with the outcome.
Excellent meeting management is not only about getting all the ideas out and pushing people to a direction they can agree on. It’s about building relationships and commitments to the collaborative effort that will support the decisions all the way through the process. Timing is critical, as is who’s in the room, and how the interaction is structured.
Megann Willson is a Researcher, a Marketing Consultant and Strategist. She was a UX expert before that had a name, a trained Innovation Games™ Facilitator, and is a former instructor of Integrated Marketing Communications at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business. As a marketer in the B2B, Industrial and Tech spaces, her claim to fame is that she has never had to sell soup, soap, or shampoo.
