The purpose of this exercise is to help you prepare for any meeting you may be going to have, either a one to one meeting such as a coaching session or appraisal, or a meeting with a number of people present such as a team meeting or project meeting.
It will guide you through thinking about what outcomes you want for the meeting, the states you will need to work with, the structure of your communication and finally the ‘sound bytes’ of content you want them to remember. Meetings can be expensive and time-consuming so it makes sense to spend some time beforehand in planning to make sure that you achieve your outcomes.
Outcome Focused
1. What are the outcomes for the meeting, for yourself and the other participants?
2. How will you know you are going in the right direction?
3. How will you know you when have achieved your outcome?
Emotional State
4. How do you want the participants to be feeling at the end of the meeting?
5. What states are they likely to be in at the start and what states do you need them to be in throughout the meeting?
6. What resourceful states do you yourself need to be in throughout the meeting? For example, calm and in control, open and responsive or confident and charismatic?
Structure
7. How do you want to structure the meeting?
8. What setup do you need to do? (If you do not know what we mean by ‘setup’, please see the MindLab resource ‘Creating Powerful Setups’)
9. How do you need to structure your language and communication?
Content
10.What content do you need to prepare?
11. What are the main points you want to focus on?
12. What are the ‘sound bytes’ you want them to remember?
