How to Run Productive and Creative Meetings

We have all experienced neverending, boring, go-nowhere meetings that feel like an utter waste of time. This free online course will help you organize your workspace to boost your overall productivity and creativity and guide you on how to improve the quality of your meetings. In the first section, you will explore some guiding principles by which you should organize your work area for maximum comfort and productivity. You will learn the key benefits of arranging your space to have everything easily accessible. The course covers real-life workspace experience, highlighting things that are right - and wrong - about it. It discusses the small changes that you can make right now to rearrange your desk area such as optimal lighting, preferred electronic devices such as keyboards and mouses, managing meals (and why you should not eat at your desk!), the appropriate cleaning wipes for your electronics and how to create a ‘to-do’ space.

The next section discusses how to boost your creativity in a meeting and get away from that dreaded feeling that arises when you gather for a discussion. You will be shown how to organize your meetings and switch things up, not just by being creative, but also by helping you understand how to make your meetings as productive as possible. This section aims to help you keep everyone focused and interested and how an ideal meeting setup allows creativity to kick in. Learn how silencing chit-chat and starting a meeting on a positive note can trigger further creativity and how to motivate participants with food or other incentives. When to take notes, the use of ‘opposites’ and ‘And/Or’ exercises to boost the output of your meetings will also be explained. Some other themes include how to achieve success without a table, split participants into groups, come up with inspiring brainstorming exercises, the advantages of having your meetings outside the four walls of your organization and benefits of having well-known or reputable guests appear. The last section will teach you how to run meetings so that they are productive. Discover why every meeting should have a facilitator, how different seating arrangements can have different outcomes, how to open a discussion, set an agenda and examples of agenda and when to wrap-up. You also will study how to deal with various personality types in a meeting to improve team dynamics and all about the seven different types of meetings and how to make each of them successful.

This course is for anyone including those in a home-office or remote environment, company or group who wants to organize their work environment to boost their overall productivity and take their meetings to the next level. Enrolling in this productivity course can have great long-term benefits for your professional life as well as any organization you may work in.