Possessing effective meeting skills is very important when it comes to providing information, brainstorming, evaluating ideas, creating a mechanism for decision making, and to allow feedback through discussion.

One of the best skills to have as a working professional is to run a good meeting. Once you have learned the skills, you will be on your way to conducting your own meeting. 

Last Tuesday there was workshop held in MSR room 130c on ‘How to Run an Effective Meeting.’

Josh Edrington (New Student Orientation Coordinator & Student Organization Adviser) stated that “Regardless of what pathway you are going in life, I think at some point you are going to be involved in meetings whether it is within an organization, church, or school. Even if you gained at least one piece of knowledge from this workshop that you can take with you, then I think that was a success.”

This workshop was designed to help develop and refine your leadership skills.

Edrington ran this workshop and started off by introducing himself and broke the ice by having everyone around the room introduce themselves as well. Edrington coordinates and advises students clubs.

The three main points that Edrington had presented were how to prep for the meeting, conducting the meeting, and how to evaluate the meeting.

The preparation for a meeting involves having an agenda with all of your main points that you want to touch on including a to do list, then coordinate who will be speaking and when, also make a room reservation for your meeting to be held in.

When you conduct a meeting you want to start it on time, establish rules and regulations, and ensure participation. Once the meeting is coming to an end or when it has ended, you can begin to evaluate the meeting by a sample evaluation which can be given in the form of a survey. That way you know what you can improve in the next meeting.

Omar Azcue (Political Science, junior) stated that, “I had forgotten about surveys and with this workshop I learned that having an insight from outside inward is something that is really going to be beneficiary. Having people’s perspective can help an organization grow.”Having students attend the workshop can give them the opportunity to pass that knowledge on to other students.

Kevin Phan (Business concentration in Marketing, sophomore) stated, “I never had any sort of leadership experience where I would need to organize and execute tasks for a group of people. Therefore, this meeting is was a foundation for me to know how to better build up my own meeting. I now can use what I have learned to make my meeting flow much easier, since it has been a bumpy road on how I was conducting the meetings.”

There will be many more workshops offered to students to help further their skills sets. For the week of October 15-19 there will be a Major Exploration Workshop on Monday (3-4pm MSR 130), on Tuesday (2-3pm, and 3:30-4:40 pm MSR 130), and a Mindfulness workshop on Thursday (1-2pm MSR 200)