Surviving Office Chaos - Managing Time, Meetings, and Conflict

Time Management 

• Activity Assessment (type/frequency of activities, critical/noncritical, resources required)
• Priorities
• Organization
• Habits

The participants will learn how to plan and schedule their work day, week, and even longer range.  They will learn how to organize their workspace to get things done, identify the people and things that waste their time, analyze personal time management strengths and challenges, and adapt to ever-changing deadlines smoothly and easily.  The course will also cover how to assess time more realistically – time required, timeframes and deadlines, responding the right way to interruptions, and stop the habits of procrastinating and perfectionism.

Effective Meetings

• Factors contributing to effective meetings
• Effective Meeting practices
• Tools for better meetings

The participants will discover how to plan and conduct meetings to maximize participation, develop an action plan using effective meeting practices, such as setting agendas and developing ground rules, and learn group decision making techniques.  This day will also cover how to use techniques for handling difficult group members and tips on effective meeting follow-up.

Communication Skills 

• Components of communication
• Style assessment
• Effective listening including two-way communication techniques
• Communicate in meetings in a way that builds consensus and solves problems.

On day three, participants will learn to identify the key components of communication in various media (face-to-face, e-mail, social media, etc.), assess their own communication style, discover the art of effective listening, and identify “clarifying questions” that help get information.  They will also learn to recognize the four communication styles through vocal and body behavior cues.

Conflict Management 

• Assertiveness vs. aggressiveness
• Approach for conflict
• Communication techniques for conflict resolution
• Provide employee feedback, praise and criticism
• Constructively give and receive criticism and confrontational messages.
• Communicate for confrontations: giving orders

On the last day, the course will cover the ability to identify and practice key assertiveness skills and how to  pick and plan conflict strategies using basic communication models.  Participants will determine how to pick and plan battles and recognize steps for dealing with anger.