Transforming Meetings® Masterclass
Overview
Meetings should draw on everyone’s skills and experience, support clear decisions and lead to action. Yet too often, the same voices dominate, quieter colleagues stay silent and discussions drift away from their purpose. This interactive one-day masterclass provides practical tools to help you lead more inclusive, focused and productive meetings.
The course introduces the Thinking Environment®: an approach that creates the conditions for people to do their best independent thinking. You will explore how behaviours such as listening without interruption, sharing time and attention equally, and helping people feel at ease can improve participation and the quality of discussion.
Through guided practice, you will learn four tools that turn these principles into the everyday structure of meetings:
- Rounds: Give everyone an uninterrupted opportunity to respond to a clear question, in turn and within an agreed time. Used at the beginning and end of meetings, and for individual agenda items, Rounds help surface different perspectives before discussion and decision-making.
- Thinking Pairs: Work in pairs, taking turns to think aloud while a colleague listens without interruption. This creates space to explore an agenda question more deeply, draw on individual experience and develop confidence in your own thinking. It also strengthens listening skills and encourages colleagues to take greater initiative.
- Dialogue: Explore a question together in a pair or small group, listening to different perspectives and developing new ideas. Dialogue creates valuable opportunities for quieter or less senior colleagues to contribute their knowledge and experience.
- Open Discussion: Bring the whole team together to explore an agenda question without interruption or one voice dominating. You will learn how the chair can support balanced participation and return to a Round or Dialogue when the discussion needs a different structure.
Each tool centres on a clear agenda question, an agreed timeframe and the meeting’s intended outcomes. You will practise choosing and combining the tools to keep discussions purposeful, make effective use of time and reach clear decisions.
By the end of the day, you will have a practical meeting structure, techniques for encouraging contributions and a clear approach to capturing decisions and actions. You will also consider how to introduce these ways of working to colleagues and adapt them to your own workplace.
Learning Outcomes
- Understand the components that enable people to think really well
- Be able to use the four basic tools to enable people to think and contribute in meetings: Rounds, Thinking Pairs, Dialogue, Open Discussion
- Understand how to prepare meetings using a simple structure
- Be able to formulate outcome-based agenda questions
- Be able to manage and make the most of presentations
- Use a simple structure to enable meeting participants to share challenges and benefit from the wisdom and experience of the group
- Be able to make and capture decisions and agreements
Agenda
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Welcome and Introductions
- Overview of the day, objectives, and format
- Participant introductions and expectations
- Tool One: Rounds, theory & practice
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Thinking in Pairs and Transformative Listening
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Tool Two: Thinking Pairs – Theory & Practice
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Break
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Thinking in Groups
- Tool Three: Dialogue – Theory & Practice
- Tool Four: Discussion – Theory & Practice
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Issues into Questions
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Framing powerful, question-based agendas that get results
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Lunch
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The Meeting
- Presentation: Meeting Principles & Structure
- Practice meeting with group-decided agenda
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Break
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The Thinking Council®
- Harnessing the group’s wisdom and experience to address individual challenges
- Theory & Practice
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Trainer’s Summary, Delegate Feedback and Close
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How do I introduce this to my colleagues?
*Programme subject to change
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Get in Touch
Book Now
- Public Sector £550 + VAT
- Private Sector £620 + VAT
- Voluntary Sector £480 + VAT
Trainer
Steph Vidal-Hall
Steph Vidal-Hall works with people who want to make a difference in the world and need to work with others to get there, often across hierarchies or departments.
As a lifelong learning expert, HE theatre lecturer and group facilitator with experience across the corporate, cultural and VCFSE sectors, she understands how to help people from all backgrounds and thinking styles feel safe and welcome to contribute confidently so that their team leaders can benefit from all of the skills and experience in the room.
She has trained hundreds of teams and community leaders in Transforming Meetings, and is particularly skilled at using this method to create and encourage equal contribution where there are dominant or high-status members. Clients include: Asda, BCC, Environment Agency, Sport England, Trussell Trust, WMCA, Welsh National Opera.
Steph is a certified Thinking Environment® Coach and Facilitator, and a founder member of the Time to Think Collegiate, a global network of consultants authorised to teach the Thinking Environment® – a framework to enable everyone to do their own best thinking. She is a member of a neurodiversity coaching network, holds an MA in Learning & Teaching and is qualified in Asset Based Community Development, Action Learning, Forum Theatre facilitation, and MBTI.
