Meetings Success Kit Overview We’ve all suffered through bad meetings. Given how much time we spend with our colleagues, this pain has real consequences for our teams and institutions. The stock advice around “making an agenda” and “drafting action items” will only do so much to make meetings more effective. Our Meeting Success Kit will help your organization start focusing on the less obvious components of meetings that can significantly shift how people engage and how they build agreement. As higher education continues to face significant and fundamental challenges, you must be able to convene and engage diverse stakeholders on key topics in order to meet your goals. What You Will Get More than just “agendas and actions items,” you will receive an online toolkit to transform meetings on your campus, including 20 short instructional videos and 17 activity designs you can use to generate ideas, encourage participation, and gather feedback. You will also receive a comprehensive assessment to evaluate the effectiveness of your meetings and help you decide where to focus your efforts. Who Will Benefit Whether you’re in charge of planning meetings, managing the logistics, or facilitating the meeting itself, this kit will help you take control of […]
Report: May 2015. In this report, you’ll see a national snapshot of program prioritization efforts based on a recent survey of over 100 institutional leaders — plus critical lessons learned to aid you in your own efforts, including: Read the report. See Other Topics in Institutional & Academic Planning
Your personal identity likely shapes the meetings you lead. In order to foster open spaces where people can test ideas and practice inclusion, you should reflect on how your identity impacts your meetings. Join us for this online training to engage in self-reflection and to begin practicing communication skills that will positively impact group dynamics. You will hone your skills around listening, modeling, and question-asking. You’ll also receive guidance on how to choose an accountability partner who will help you preserve a culturally inclusive meeting environment. The information provided in this training can be applied to in-person and virtual meetings alike.
Several months ago, the Chronicle featured an article on advising focused on the work of Dr. Ned Laff, who detailed the importance of broad-based advising and the gaps between what today’s students need and what they frequently receive. Drawing upon an advising career at multiple colleges, Laff focused his comments on the disconnect between advising and career services. I resonate with his analysis, and, with more than four decades of my own in higher education, I contend that the gaps reach even deeper. At the root of the problem is the failure of colleges to keep up with evolving market demands. Neither the fundamental concepts of college advising nor the associated reward system have been updated in decades, resulting in a disconnect between market demands and what the academy is delivering. We need to do a better job for today’s students. Why aren’t we delivering? It is my observation that we will not deliver what students need until we connect advising to faculty evaluation. Multiple surveys over a decade or more indicate that today’s students and parents expect a college diploma to come packaged with a clear-cut career path—not just a major and a broad general education, but experiences that […]
Valued at $75. Free and exclusive for members!
Deans across higher education are tackling some of the biggest challenges yet. Take, for instance, declining student enrollments (and the reduced budgets that follow) and the low levels of faculty morale and engagement (which, in turn, lead to high turnover). Let’s face it—these are big problems that take a village to solve. And yet, you probably feel like the responsibility to remedy these challenges falls largely on your shoulders. So how can you convene others across your college to become part of the village that can help you to tackle these challenges? Watch this recording of a live event where you’ll learn how you can elicit the best thinking in your unit. This training includes a simulated activity which will demonstrate how you can design and facilitate a collaborative and interactive meeting or brainstorming session with your team. You’ll walk away with a detailed facilitation guide and tips for how to implement this practice on your campus. If you’re looking for ways to reinvigorate your meetings and workshops, this training is for you!
Most meetings simply don’t work and are a waste of precious time. Unfortunately, many higher education leaders spend much of their professional lives in these unproductive meetings. Higher education runs on thousands of daily meetings including committees, task forces, departmental meetings, and so on. When was the last time you participated in an engaging, productive meeting where you felt that it was a great use of your time and attention? When’s the last time you looked at your meeting calendar and said to yourself, “I am really looking forward to Tuesday’s committee meeting!” Here are 10 practical tips for improving your meetings, based on Academic Impressions’s powerful Meeting Diagnostic Tool (MDT): 1. To Lead or Facilitate? Senior leaders often ask, “Should I facilitate or fully participate in the meeting?” We have found that trying to be the leader as well as the facilitator is not a good idea. Facilitators move the group towards good decisions, use good processes, and are neutral. Often, a leader cannot be neutral about where a decision is going. Attendees know this and will wait until the leader signals his or her desired decision. We suggest that the leader appoint a neutral facilitator; this will allow the […]
We’ve all suffered through bad meetings. Given how much time we spend with our colleagues, this pain has real consequences for our teams and institutions. The stock advice around “making an agenda” and “drafting action items” will only do so much to make meetings more effective. Our Meeting Success Kit will help your organization start focusing on the less obvious components of meetings that can significantly shift how people engage and how they build agreement. As higher education continues to face significant and fundamental challenges, you must be able to convene and engage diverse stakeholders on key topics in order to meet your goals.
