Meeting guidance | Cthrough

Optimization of communication at meetings

Every successful company and team require good collaboration between people. Good cooperation needs good communication, but this is not as easy as it sounds.
In business, meetings are the most effective means of optimizing collaboration and communication. Yet meetings often come with inefficiencies and/or frustrations, which can hinder or even thwart business success.

Cthrough coaching & consulting helps companies and teams to meet effectively and constructively in two different ways. By presiding and directing the meeting (especially communication) as an external chair/facilitator, or by training the team and making them more competent in conducting meetings.

What are the benefits and gains of meeting guidance?

Achieving (meeting) goals, while the atmosphere remains as optimal as possible,
Direct improvement of meeting efficiency and effectiveness,
Drastic reduction of conflicts in the workplace,
You only need to focus on the conversation content,
Improved communication and collaboration,
Increase in team efficiency,
More job satisfaction.

How does meeting guidance work?

This guidance, external facilitator and/or meeting training can be part of a larger coaching process in ‘team coaching’. An important point for team success is good communication, which is why this integration.

Meeting guidance not only has added value if it is part of team development, only guidance is also a good option. Especially for the moments when an external chairman is desired for a certain topic or goal, or when there is only a training need to improve the meeting level.

External facilitator

Depending on the meeting purpose(s) and subject(s), the external facilitator presides one or more meetings. This facilitator will structure, direct, and optimize the meeting, but he or she has no decision-making power. Just with a normal meeting and an internal facilitator, there are three main phases for the external facilitator, namely:

Preparation: is used to come up with a plan how the meeting(s) can achieve a goal or goals. It is not just about drawing up the (provisional) agenda and sending it to the meeting participants. Neither that the order or the time allocation is correct, it is also about strategy. Which agenda item do you put first, what is most important? Anticipate the course of the meeting. What conditions must be set in order to achieve the goals and to guarantee a good atmosphere.
Execution: then the meeting itself. It is now a question of intervening at the right times, while also monitoring the atmosphere. In this way you only have to focus on the content of the conversation and the external facilitator will guide and optimize the process and communication.
Aftercare: the meeting is over and the participants know what to do and what is expected of them. To complete the meeting, the facilitator will tidy up the meeting room, will chat with participants (who want to), and send the minutes.

Meeting training

We believe that you have to develop and maintain a competency, such as meetings. You can only do this through training. You will need to know and understand certain knowledge and/or theory, but in training we focus on bring this in to practice.

We have made a document, which can be used through self-study, that includes and briefly summarizes all knowledge and theory about meetings and conducting them. The training sessions are tailored to what you need and what is relevant for you, your team, and organization. The training is constructed didactically, which means that it is made more difficult progressively. This way you stay being challenged and keep developing.
On average there are 6 to 9 sessions of half a day each, where the main focus is on practicing through role-play, making mistakes, and learning from them.