Meeting Skills
Training Exercises and Resources

This exercise helps delegates learn how to avoid negative mentality in meetings. When confronted with a new idea, most people think of problems first. They first consider how the idea doesn’t work and how it would not be suitable rather than seeing how it can help or have potential if extended or combined with other ideas.

This exercise is a simple technique in helping to avoid this negativity. To take advantage of it however, delegates must consider using the technique back at work when attending meetings.

Humans are predictable. Magicians have taken advantage of this predictability for generations. Knowing how to read people helps you significantly in your negotiations, persuasions and overall communications. This ability to predict human behaviour is often related to our evolutionary past. As we have evolved to survive in our environment, we have acquired a lot of “hardwiring” in our brain which now simply dictate our behaviour. We are all too familiar with some of the common behaviours such as seeking water when thirsty or wanting to leave the meeting room when we can no longer hold it.

However, some of these hardwiring and their consequences are more subtle and a careful observation can give the observer a significant advantage in predicting the eventual behaviour. It's all about reading non-verbal signals, where people  are looking, their body orientation, their posture, their eyes, their legs and other gestures. 

In this article, a particularly useful body language technique is presented that helps you read people and understand what people are likely to do before they do it and to use this knowledge to your advantage. This also helps you to improve your communication skills as you don't have to rely primarily on what people say and can read other non-verbal signals to understand them.

Some people feel uncomfortable when they are in the presence of a group and confronted with silence. They just don’t know how to fill the gap. Others might want to get straight to the point with no warm-up chat which can appear cold and emotionless. In both cases, it’s great to know how to master the art of small talk and use it when necessary. This is a fun exercise that helps the delegates to become comfortable in making small talks with others.