MODULE ONE: EFFECTIVE MEETING MINUTES

Audio Script:


HOW TO RUN A MEETING

Hello and welcome to the Video Jug!

Meeting can be incredibly productive way of making decisions, planning for the future or communicating to a group of people at once. We took this advice from Sean McFeast on m-t-d.com.uk to show you how to run an effective meeting.

STEP 1: PREPARATION

First, establish why you need to hold a meeting? what is your aim? what you need the meeting to achieve?

Make a list of targets for the meeting and write an agenda of items you need to tackle during your time together. It's good

idea to send this out to your colleagues before hand so that they know what to expect.

STEP 2: A FACILITATOR

An effective meeting needs someone to act as referee. They are there to keep the meeting on track and to make sure everyone

sticking to the agenda. Ideally, they should be impartial. If they can't be used broking colleagues, they could be anyone.

STEP 3: ROOM LAYOUT

Make sure everyone can see everyone else and choose a layout that doesn't reinforce hierarchy. Everyone should feel being able to speak freely. A U-shape arrangement is perfect with a facilitator as a gap in the U.

STEP 4: TIMING


If you schedule your meeting to begin on-the-hours, the chances are people will drift in, grab a coffee, have a chat, eat biscuits, campare plans for the weekend and generally, bunk off for at least 10 minutes before you're able to begin.

Instead, schedule it for off-hour times, set 10 past instead of 2 o'clock. This simple psychological treat will encourage punctuality and means you can start on time. You should also have enforced cut-of-points to close the meeting. This will reduce dithering and keeping you on track.

STEP 5: ICEBREAKER

If some members of the group haven't met, run through simple group introduction, go around the group and get people to introduce themselves with who they are, what they do, and something silly to help break the ice. Embarassing stories are always good for this; get everyone to say the first record that they've bought or their favorit pleasures.

STEP 6: THE HANGER

You have a definite purpose for your meeting but...thinking individual as they are. Your employees want to talk about things that aren't on your agenda.

Have a separate piece of paper available when you can write down and store off-topic ideas for discussion later. This will help people feel they are being listened to, while keeping the meeting on tasks.

STEP 7: THE 5-MINUTE BELL


There's always one who's attempted to talk and talk and talk at great length about their pet subjects while you want to give everyone a chance to speak. Give permission for anyone to call time on anyone else who speaks more than 5 minutes.

Bring a bell into a meeting. Position it in front of the room and encourage people to ring it if the old mourner or anyone goes on for too long.

STEP 8: MINUTES

During the meeting, you should have someone to take notes on what have been discussed and agreed. Once the meeting is over, have someone write this up. They should be emailed them to everyone so people know what they said has been recorded. Also, keep people informed of the outcomes of the meeting and what actions have been taken on decisions you made.

Congratulations! You're now a meeting master. No more biscuit eating, coffee swingling, time-wasting for you. Ah, well,...

MODULE TWO: EFFECTIVE EMAILS

Note:

• If your letter's salutation is "Dear Sir or Madam", the complimentary closing should be "Yours faithfully" instead of "Your sincerely".
  
  
• If your letter's salutation is "Dear Mr John or similar", the complimentary closing is "Yours sincerely".
  
  
• Today, people are increasingly using "Best Regards, Kind Regards, Warm Regards, etc" in all circumstances, especially in U.S.
  

ANSWER TO PRACTICES FOR MODULE TWO:

WHY EMAILS?






EXAMPLES:







IMPACT OF EMAILS ON ONE'S PRODUCTIVITY: EMAIL MANAGEMENT


Audio Script:

My name is Randall Dean. I'm a totally and completely obssesed time manager at PDA GUY, that's really true, under GUY that basically everytime I drive any place I try to figure out the path and the least number of stop place.

The reason being I want to press that we spend every 6 month in our lives, just sitting in the stop place and I want that time for me. So that'really what we spend our time and talking about tonight is going through a lot of strategies and opportunities to give you some ideas how to take this beast, which is your email account and get it under control.

Email is a wonderful tool for business advancement. Do you remember back late 80's and 90's, we all started to get online to get email account. Think about what's that done, your ability to communicate with people globally instantaneously, and share not just the text information but file package including significant documents all around the world. It's a huge business advancement tool but it's a new technology. Yes, it's been here for 20 years basically.

What's happened is not many of us have been formally trained how to treat this business tool so that we can use it as part of proactive system for giving in front of our line. And what we've done instead we've drawn several bad hahits that turned into very reactive and emotional tool.

One of the first recommendation that I like to share with people when it comes to this topic is this: It's a habit. This is really source of the big tips . Don't just use free emails for everything, not just everything in your office; everything in your life.

The Three-Minute One-Touch Rule: I consider this the ultimate office block-buster. Here's the way things work. You get in the habit whenever you're in your office working on anything that you're going to look at something new regardless of what the new thing is. You're going to look at something new in emails, voice-mail, snail-mail, article to read, report to review, whatever that piece of information is . You get in the habit that you look at it, you touch it one time that you make decision very quickly.

And the decision is this: Will this take three minutes or less to get it done right now? If the decision is NO, you put it in your pilot organization. If the decision is YES, it takes three minutes or less to get it done, you do it right now. By moving out of your way and giving out to your account to keep that account under control. And more importantly, allows work to flow.

Now, let's focus on your email account. Let's really think abut your email account. This is thing I recommend.

These are two or three accounts you want to take a look at it. One is your professional account: Don't give it out to anybody other than people you work with and doing business with. Do not give it to your family and friends.

That's what you do to have your personal account. Personal email account is to give it to your family and friends, all those people like these. Then, third accound is your internet account; what they're for? whenever you do online commerce, give them the third account. Because that's where, that's the majority of spams coming from.

Here's one of the other key things, alright. So you have yourself a bit structure here and turn the number of accounts you have and diversify the amount of number coming in. What is the blinger? What's the blinger? let me show you what the blinger is....whenever you work at your desk...bling....the Outlook just turns on and it bings.... everytime. I see people to do it all the time. They're working...bing... everytime they have to jump over. What that is, there was on of the worst habits you can possibly have. When it causes...it comes to be proactive to maintain your productivity. Basically, everytime this thing goes off, you get in yourself an option that causes you to lose train of your thought on the project that you're on.

But the key point here is that you want to balance the responsiveness with your productivity requirements. Most of us want to be responsible professionals; getting back to people; appropriate and considered manner and yet we also have our work get done, don't we? So, what we want to do is balance that. When do we check email? Here is four times. Here's the four times I recommend for most professionals, most. Now, if you're deep in client or customer service, you may want to do this more often. If you're baked in project management planning, you even might want to dialogue back a little bit.

Here's the four times I recommend:

1. First time: first thing in the morning. When you dig yourself together the process. You know you get in the office ...try to work out on that day.
2. Second time: About an hour before lunch.
3. Third time: Right after lunch.
4. And also about an hour before you leave.

Do not check your email five minutes before you want to leave. You can also check your signifant project completion when you work

on a project when you get done. When you're done, you check it. Or you get it done in the meeting. You're done it in the meeting, you come back and you haven't started it. Anything else, time to check emails; so you have a couple of times when you do these stuffs because your train of thought's not invested in something. The key thing that you want to do is maintain that train of thought when you're working on big projects by not getting distracted on emails. This is a small email strategy that may help you get through it.

First, goal is to keep "inbox" empty: the key thing is whenever there's a mesage to come in, you want to take an action on it; meaning you want to reply them,tickle them, file them or delete them. Other things that I learn is that you want to be ruthless. You know this stage of age, we're getting spams; so much spams; so much done; so many viruses; so much spyware.

Propably the smart philosophy is to be a little bit ruthless when it comes to your email accounts. The other thing is to be concern. Any of you have that people like to carbon copy everybody and everything all the time. Yes, a little bit insane, isn't it? Think about your email this way, is this the most efficient and appropriate tool to make this communication right now. Now, it's a matter, the smartest thing to do is using different communications backbone. And then the other thing, you got the whole office that people do crazy stuff. This is the time to get them out on the same page.

MODULE THREE: EFFECTIVE LETTERS AND MEMOS

ANSWERS TO PRACTICES FOR MODULE THREE:

MODULE FOUR: EFFECTIVE BUSINESS REPORTS

ANSWERS TO PRACTICES FOR MODULE FOUR:

FURTHER RESOURCES

CONTACTS:

Email: timothy.vinh.truong@gmail.com

Cell Phone: 0909 325 111

Office Address: 98 Tran Quang Khai Street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City

DICTIONARIES:

http://www.tratu.baamboo.com/
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EFFECTIVE RESUMES AND JOB APPLICATION LETTERS:

JOB INTERVIEW PROCESS:

COMMONLY USED PHRASES AT WORK: