Eli Mina Consulting
  Building better decision making teams and leaders

Interactive Training Programs
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In-House Training Programs (Custmomized to your needs)


Building Better Decision Making Bodies

This two-day workshop includes two segments. It gives your decision making team the tools it needs to work well together, coherently and cohesively. These tools will enable your team to remain focused on its mandate, make smart and strategically-driven decisions, maximize opportunities, minimize exposure to risk, and have productive and inclusive meetings.

Segment 1:
The Foundation for Shared Decision Making		 Segment 2:
Meetings & Rules of Order
In this segment of the workshop, we will discuss how to construct a solid foundation for shared decision-making for your decision making team. We will present tools to help make your collective decisions more proactive, visionary, smart, and inclusive. Specific topics include:
  • Measuring Board or Council effectiveness .
  • Measuring the quality of collective decisions.
  • Roles of the Board Chair or Mayor.
  • Roles of voting members.
  • Roles of senior administrative staff, committees.
  • Decision making models: Consensus, Majority.
  • Minority's duty to respect collective decisions.
  • Placing collective interests ahead of narrow ones.
  • Conflict of interest guidelines.
  • Confidentiality guidelines ("in-camera meetings").
  • Dealing with team dysfunctions.
  • Community and stakeholder relationships.
In this segment of the workshop we will present tools to make your future meetings productive, timely, inclusive and even enjoyable. We will also teach you to demystify and humanize the rules of order for meetings and use them sensibly and intelligently. Specific topics include:
  • Ten key ingredients of a successful meeting.
  • Proactive and visionary planning of meetings.
  • Chair's roles and member's roles in a meeting.
  • Managing people, time and issues in a meeting.
  • Keeping a meeting on track and on time.
  • Handling counter-productive behaviours.
  • Shifting from rules of order to core principles.
  • Shifting from "parliamentarese" to plain language.
  • Majority, tie votes, abstentions, quorum.
  • Chair's debating and voting rights.
  • Handling Main Motions, Amendments.
  • Motions to postpone, refer, "table", others.

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Making Meetings Work Better
Are your meetings monotonous and dull? Are they dominated by the most outspoken members, to the exclusion of others? Do they agonize a lot and achieve very little? Do they become unraveled at the first sign of controversy?

In this one day workshop we discuss meeting dynamics. We give you tools to make your future meetings productive, timely, inclusive and even ... enjoyable. Specific topics include:
  • Ten key ingredients of a successful meeting.
  • Proactive and visionary planning of meetings.
  • Chair's roles and member's roles in a meeting.
  • Managing people, time and issues in a meeting.
  • Keeping a meeting on track and on time.
  • Handling counter-productive behaviours during meetings.
  • Asserting yoursefl in a meeting without getting angry.
  • Making a meeting more varied, engaging, interesting and fun.
  • Dealing with contentious issues.
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Rules of Order - Demystified & Humanized
Rules of order are intended to help facilitate progress, include members in discussions and decision-making, and protect majority and minority rights. Yet often they achieve the exact opposite result, i.e.: impede progress, and confuse, frustrate and intimidate people.

In this one day workshop, learn to use procedures sensibly and intelligently. Specific topics include:
  • Shifting from technical rules to core principles.
  • Making the rules of order more "user-friendly".
  • Determining the significance (or lack thereof) of procedural violations (points of order).
  • Majority, tie votes, abstentions, proxies, super-majorities (2/3 and 3/4 votes).
  • Chair's debating and voting rights.
  • Open and closed ("in-camera") meetings; Quorum.
  • Handling main motions, amendments.
  • Handling motions to postpone, refer, "table", and others.
  • Re-visiting adopted or defeated motions.
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Community Consultation & Consensus building
Should your decision making team consult the community and stakeholders? What are the potential risks and benefits? What are the do's and don'ts? What can be done to go beyond "political appeasement" and make the consultation process meaningful and beneficial?

In this workshop (one or two days) we discuss principles for community consultation and tools for building consensus and relationships with stakeholders. We discuss topics such as:
  • Community involvement principles.
  • Risks and opportunities of community consultation.
  • Community engagement levels.
  • Formal public hearings versus informal community events and workshops.
  • Planning public events: agendas, internal consensus building, pre-meeting dispute resolution.
  • Facilitating informal discussions with stakeholders.
  • Facilitating community forums and public meetings.
  • Dealing with contentious issues.
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Minute Taking Standards & Related Issues
In this one day workshop we discuss minute taking standards and related issues, including how to work effectively with board and committee members. Specific topics include:
  • General principles for minute taking;
  • How much of the discussion should be recorded;
  • Making minutes more "reader-friendly;
  • Recording motions, amendments, and other actions;
  • De-personalizing the minutes;
  • Minutes approval process and its impact;
  • Impacts of freedom of information and privacy issues;
  • Working effectively with decision-making team chair and members.;
  • General discussion of meetings and agenda design.
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In the Hot-Seat
Your credibility may be on the line as you find yourself - often unexpectedly - in the hot-seat, confronted by tough, pointed and hard hitting questions. You desperately need tools to recover from surprises, slow down the interaction and control it, rather than have it control you !!

This one day workshop helps you improve your responses to tough questions during interactions with colleagues, the media and the general public. To enhance the learning process, hot-seat interactions will be simulated, videotaped and analyzed. Specific topics include:
  • How to avoid common traps during hot-seat interactions.
  • How to structure logical responses under pressure.
  • How to recover from surprises and loaded questions.
  • How to defuse hostility and shift to neutral ground.
  • How to deal with interruptions, accusations, and rude behaviour.
  • How to avoid generalizations, comparisons and speculations.
  • How to develop alternatives to "no comment"
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Communicating on Your Feet
To be truly effective, a presentation requires more than just knowledge and technical expertise. It requires the ability to make them engaging and compelling for the listeners.

This two to three day workshop helps participants become more effective presenters and public speakers. We use videotaping to give feedback on presentation content and delivery. Specifically, we discuss how to:
  • Define clearly the desired outcomes of your presentation and set out to achieve them.
  • Customize the presentation to the needs of your audience.
  • Make your content clear, relevant and convincing.
  • Organize your presentation so it is easy to follow.
  • Add vocal, visual and emotional appeals to engage your audience.
  • Make your presentation conversational and interactive, and maintain audience rapport.
  • Make team presentations and lead panel discussions.
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Principled Negotiations
Negotiations are often viewed as adversarial bargaining sessions, with parties engaging in haggling and power plays, becoming entrenched in rigid positions, and dedicated to protecting only their own interests, but with little regard to the needs and interests of other parties.

In this one day workshop we discuss a holistic negotiating process which focuses on the interests and needs of all parties and seeks principled "win-win" solutions. Specific topics include:
  • Principles of successful negotiations.
  • Preparation: Defining your own interests and needs.
  • Preparation: Getting to know the interests of other parties.
  • Choosing negotiators and establishing their authority.
  • Ground rules: Definition and implementation.
  • The negotiation process: Problem definition, options, dispute resolution.
  • Active Listening & Communication Skills.
  • An External Mediator: Roles, desired qualities.
  • Criteria by which to measure the quality of agreements.

To schedule a guest speaker or a hands-on in-house training program,
send us an e-mail, or phone 604-730-0377.

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