Meeting Skills

As a teacher we are used to keeping things on time and on-task and those skills are very useful for meetings and yet the worst meetings I've known are teacher meetings! There are a lot of good books in the area, but here are two that I think are particularly handy: Meetings Guide and Meetings Pocketbook. The two golden rules of meetings are: Write an agenda and stick to it. Easy to suggest, but difficult to do in practice.

Types of Meeting

Informational

To compensate for poor English it is advisable for students to prepare PowerPoint slides or if there is no projector to give out handouts that clearly state what is going on.
Presentation info>>

Brainstorming

Mindmaps are invaluable to encourage conversation and to encourage people to participate and be sure to give people a clear agenda in advance to give them a chance to think about what is going to happen.
Mindmap info>>

Negotiating

If you expect to be pitching ideas or requesting budgets be sure to be armed with all the facts and figures. It is a good idea to create a briefing sheet for yourself to ensure you can get your point across. Do not be afraid to write out your points in full, if you are not confident in your spoken English or even prepare handouts that you can give out during the meeting to take the pressure away from spoken English. I would also advise you to dress for the occassion, "power dressing" often helps you to feel confident and a little sugar from chocolate or something sweet can help to encourage your brain to think more quickly. Do not eat or drink during the meeting if you are nervous.

Resources on this Website

Other Useful Pages

Sound Scripting
Make your speeches and presentations more natural.
Pronunciation
Our Pronunciation guide is a great place to start work on accent neutralisation.
Seat Plans and Layouts
How to change seating arrangements to suit your meeting room. This resource also includes clipart to make it easier when doing your own planning.

Handouts

Active Listening Skills (49KB PDF)
Survey of Listening skills and how to improve them.
Business Meeting Prompts & Lesson Idea (128KB PDF)
A project meeting lesson with prompts for participants and roles, optionally the can be done in the style of Donald Trump's The Apprentice.
Tourism Project Meeting prompts (264KB PDF)
Cue cards to encourage speaking and roleplay in a meeting context.
Respond To Change (228KB PDF)
Lesson idea for managing Change.
Dress Codes (317 KB PDF)
Complete Lesson plan with Matching cards and exercises to assist students understanding of dress codes.
Audience Checklist (88KB PDF)
Simple checklist to ensure that you have as much information about your audience as possible, improving your chances of giving a successful presentation.
Body Language (63KB PDF)
This activity gives students a chance to learn about body language and the signals they could be sending to the audience and signals the audience could be giving them.
SWOT Analysis (48KB PDF)
Our guide to SWOT analysis.
Personal SWOT Analysis (34KB PDF)
A personal SWOT analysis to examine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Good introduction to SWOT analyses and personal development tool.

USEFUL WEBSITES

Business English Videos
This Australian series covers business meetings comprehensively.

BBC Meetings
The BBC's Business English guide to meetings.