Effective Meetings

Notes from the great discussion in our CPD session today:

Running Effective Meetings
Leading a Learning Community
To be outstanding in the category of leadership and management:
“All leaders, including governors, are highly ambitious and lead by example.” (New Ofsted framework)
Three key ideas
• What do you want to achieve
• Time and planning
• Encourage participation
What do you want to achieve?
Planning
• To be effective, decide what you want to achieve, plan for it.
• To be effective, ensure the venue is correct, plan for it.
• To be effective, consider how much time each item will take, plan for it.
Encourage participation
You want people to feel they have had a worthwhile experience. Worthwhile experiences come from everyone having a part to play.
Ways to encourage participation …
Results of group discussion:
• Feedback on paired observations and learning walks
• Share activities that have worked for individuals
• Sharing good practice
• Sharing resources e.g. websites
• Make sure everyone contributes
• Give some ‘quiet time’ or ‘break out’ time to carry out activities and come back
• Share positive feedback
• Try to avoid too much info giving – find other ways but build trust that people will read!
• Try to avoid too much ‘telling what to do’
• Have a feel good factor
• Know what your desired outcome is
• Have some meetings with just one or two agenda items – make them reflective, not action packed
• Try ways of developing collaborative work, collaborative decision making (Fronter forums e.g.)
• Keep focused
• Reflect back what people say to them
• Have group aims
• Make it interactive
Finally – make sure everyone knows the:
• Rationale
• Impact