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How to Facilitate a Truly Productive Meeting

4.9 (18)

4 Weeks

Cohort-based Course

A highly-practical course for people who feel their team meetings could be more productive, engaging, and focused.

How to Facilitate a Truly Productive Meeting

4.9 (18)

4 Weeks

Cohort-based Course

A highly-practical course for people who feel their team meetings could be more productive, engaging, and focused.

Hosted by

Dom Michalec

Professional Facilitator | Member, International Association of Facilitators

Dom Michalec

Professional Facilitator | Member, International Association of Facilitators

Course overview

"I feel like this course gave me super powers I can use in literally any job."

How to Facilitate a Truly Productive Meeting was created to help you do something you already want to do: put an end to bad, unproductive meetings.

Designed with that purpose in mind, this 4-week course will build facilitation skills and habits so that you and your team can overcome the #1 culprit of lost time and focus.

Every lesson includes step-by-step instruction, real-life examples, practical facilitation techniques, and opportunities for you to immediately apply the techniques in your very own meetings at work.

Each week builds upon one another to create a personalized toolbox you can immediately use to lead impactful meetings throughout your career.

By the end of the course, you'll have not only new skills and tools, but also the knowledge and wisdom to know when, how, and why to use them to lead truly productive meetings.

What you'll get in this course:

- Over an hour of practical video content to kickstart your productive meetings

- A follow along workbook to make it easier to put concepts into practice

- A personal 30 min strategy call with Dom, affectionately called "Get Stuff Done" (GSD) calls

- A personal 1 hour workshop to turn your aspirations into habits for truly productive meeting facilitation

- 4 group workshops to turn course concepts into action for your specific context

- Access to course alumni to share, bounce ideas, and connect with after the course

- A certificate of completion at the conclusion of the course

You will benefit from this course if:

Your calendar is littered with meetings that lack compelling purpose, clear outcomes, or intentional agreements for participation.

Your team spends the majority of their days in unstructured meetings, leaving little to no time to get actual work done throughout the day.

You notice dramatic loss in post-meeting follow through, misalignment with other teams, and increased calls for recurring status updates.

Your calendar is littered with meetings that lack compelling purpose, clear outcomes, or intentional agreements for participation.

Your team spends the majority of their days in unstructured meetings, leaving little to no time to get actual work done throughout the day.

You notice dramatic loss in post-meeting follow through, misalignment with other teams, and increased calls for recurring status updates.

What you'll be able to do by the end of the course

Prepare the right people to show up focused and ready to do the right work

Many think an agenda alone is sufficient for preparing a meeting, however, a compelling purpose is more beneficial for setting the tone for a group of focused people.

That's why we'll go beyond an agenda and produce a 4 point invitation outline that simply works.

Guide any team with confidence while maintaining line of sight on a clear outcome

A facilitator's role is not just to lead activities, but to make it easier for people to achieve a goal through intentional connection.

That's why we'll focus on facilitation principles that unleash everyone's ability to fully engage in both harmony and healthy conflict.

Get alignment across teams to sustain momentum after the meeting

The meeting doesn't end when you hit 'log off,' it ends when everyone knows what happened, what's up next, its importance to them, and their role in seeing it through.

That's why we'll craft followups that build org-wide visibility, alignment, and follow through.

Begin to change the meeting culture at work with your new mindset and habits

Information alone doesn't change behavior. Instead, you'll learn how to set the example for everyone else around you with your new skillset.

That's why we'll use time for practice and feedback so you can walk away confident and ready to lead productive meetings.

Nice things course alumni have said about the experience

Dom is an expert facilitator and this course will help you develop the mindset to be a more skilled facilitator. You will pick up useful frameworks and the mindset for how to help a group of people achieve better meeting outcomes. This course is very hands-on, interactive, and will result in you putting the learnings to work immediately.

Matt B.

Product Director

Dom truly is one of the greatest facilitators I have ever witnessed, so I felt honored to have a chance to learn from him. I left this course feeling encouraged! There was validation that all of us in the group were experiencing similar meeting facilitation challenges, but have great skills to now turn those challenges around.

Gabrielle H.

Co-founder & Product Coach

I loved this course! I now understand 'why' and 'how' we can meet more effectively due to this course. I learned great tactics on how you can facilitate meetings to drive better outcomes. Do you spend a lot of time in meetings? Do you feel like your meetings go off-topic? Do you constantly need to have follow up meetings? This course is for you.

Mohan P.

Product Manager

I found the course really helpful. In today's world of non-stop meetings - many of which seem like a waste of time - I feel prepared to maximize meeting time by making sure everyone has a clear understanding of why we are meeting, why they are there, what is expected during the meeting and then (possibly most important) creating a positive outcome.

Jody W.

Senior Product Manager

Dom is an expert facilitator, and I knew this course would be FIRE because I've seen him in action. Dom created an environment ripe for learning - mixing live classes with asynchronous material, and a highly collaborative space for interaction with other students. I have been practicing the techniques Dom taught us with incredible results!

Jackie F.

Co-founder, Head of Product & Agile Consulting

I wanted to take time to learn skills on how to run a meeting and what I got was way more valuable. I started understanding how to drive change in a team and encourage working as a group. The subtle but effective lessons taught me techniques for generating positive conversation and working at the moment.

Dion U.

Product Manager

First and foremost, Dom is an absolutely incredible facilitator. You can tell he has passion for this space, and it's proven to be infectious. I appreciate the structure of the course and the mix of live exercises with asynchronous content consumption. The three parts are logically broken out, and I appreciated the thoughtful cohort size.

Steve M.

Senior Product Manager

I put what I learned to work and was finally able to get stakeholder alignment on a critical and sensitive topic, which is typically really difficult! This class is very practical and the results have been incredible so far.

Shea S.

Director, Product Management

Wow! What can I say? I thought I was walking into a course to learn many tools for leading meetings, but walked away with an important new leadership skill. I now see the role facilitation plays in not only meetings, but also in how a leader helps cultivate direction, team intelligence, and buy-in for critical decisions. Highly recommend!

Diya N.

Principal Program Manager

Great use of in-seat and async time. Amazing content and conversation/discussion approach used and has accelerated my interest and confidence in being an effective facilitator. I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to understand how to make meeting rituals, active discussion, and action more approachable and collaborative for all.

Allison H.

Product Manager

"From the content, to the cadence, to the collaborative cohort, to the exemplary facilitation, HTFATPM was an all around outstanding experience."

Mark B.

Management Consultant

Absolutely incredible course! I definitely recommend to anyone who wants to learn how to run a more effective & productive meeting.

Michael C.

Senior Account Executive

"The best thing about this course was that the lessons were immediately applicable to real-life challenges. The first lesson alone was incredibly valuable, focusing on the four principles of a productive invitation. Putting these principles into practice had an immediate effect on my meetings and made a discernible difference in productivity.

Jen T.

Executive Director

This course was extremely valuable. The facilitator's experience was presented in a digestible/transferrable and non dogmatic way. The course was designed not to lecture, but to facilitate active discussion and practice learning with the material. I recommend folks interested in the subject matter make the investment.

Steve G.

Senior Product Manager

Dom's approach in the sessions is focused and purposeful, and he created a collaborative, friendly space for the group to come together. The prep work videos are jam-packed with info (very little fluff, which is great IMO) and it was easy for me to find almost immediate opportunities to practice what I learned.

Katryn C.

Managing Director

Dom is an incredible facilitator and instructor. He crafts great virtual spaces for robust discussion and reflection, essential for leaning. The homework is meaningful, not overwhelming, and ensures folks are prepared to come to the training session to discuss and learn new techniques to facilitate discussions, not just be talked at.

Michael T.

Senior Product Manager

Dom is very genuine and combines that with a great course structure, which is difficult to do and funny enough incredibly applicable to a skilled facilitator in my opinion.

Bob C.

Director of Product Management

From the get-go, this course provides you with skills and principles you can apply to make your meetings more effective.

Jerry O.

Agile Coach

Meet Your Instructor

Dom Michalec

Professional Facilitator | Member, International Association of Facilitators (IAF)

I've devoted my career to advance a vision. A vision where people wake up every day feeling connected to others and end the day fulfilled by the contributions of their work. My tool of choice to enact that vision just happens to be facilitation.

My experience as a professional facilitator has led me to over 200 workshops in the past 5 years with companies all over the world. As a Product Coach at Pathfinder Product, I help product teams make improvements to how they collaborate, enabling them to focus on building things people love to use.

Course Schedule & Topics

~ 8 hours over 4 Sessions

Friday, August 18th, 12:00-12:45 pm EST
(Encouraged Attendance) Course Kickoff
Course topics covered this week:
- Connect with your fellow cohort members
- What to expect throughout the course
- Q&A before we start
Friday, August 25th 12:00-1:30 pm EST
Workshop #1: The Productive Invitation
Course topics covered this week:
- 4 Principles of a Productive Meeting Invitation
Friday, September 1st 12:00-1:30 pm EST
Workshop #2: Designing and Holding Space
Course topics covered this week:
- 2 Principles for Facilitating Harmony and Healthy Conflict
Friday, September 8th 12:00-1:30 pm EST
Workshop #3: The Productive Followup
Course topics that serve this outcome:
- 1 Principle for Creating Post-Meeting Alignment and Momentum