Friction-free meetings for modern teams
THE 3-TALK SERIES FOR T/PgMs
Break out of meeting gridlock and get meetings driving crucial deliverables. Fewer meetings, faster teams, bolder outcomes!
Warm hello from me, Dr Carrie Goucher in Cambridge, UK!
I will be sharing my best tools and techniques with you over three talks this fall, including an AI prompt guide to help you implement everything you learn.
Much of the way we meet is a throwback to the industrial era. I will show you fresh, effective ways to meet which are a match for the complex, knowledge era - and easy to use immediately. You'll learn how to use meetings to develop the progress and trust to nail your programmes objectives.
View the talksThree talks to transform how you meet and collaborate
Love collaborating, hate meetings..?!
24th September 2025 | 1:00 – 2:00pm PST
Learn techniques to transform how you meet with precision and humanity. Lead sessions that get more done together and free up time for deep work so you team collaborate faster and with less friction.
Psychological safety: lead 'strong space' meetings
8th October 2025 | 9:00-10:00am PST
Get to the heart of what matters rapidly in meetings and make difficult-but-important conversations easy when the stakes are high - so you team can deliver crucial milestones, safely.
Decide together: disagree and make great decisions
18th November 2025 | 1:00 – 2:00pm PST
Learn three techniques that will help you make decisions faster and with better outcomes. This session will give you practical tools to agree (and disagree) brilliantly, reduce bottlenecks and keep projects moving forward.
Toolkit
Session 1 guides
>> 📌 Session 1 cheatsheet! <<
Work is tribal - I'll unpack exactly what this means for you as a leader
Unlearn industrial era meetings - and start meeting for the collaborative era
Your team is probably in parent-child mode
Concept 1: Make space for deep work
Flipped meetings: Cut your meetings in half (without missing a thing)
Stop presenting slides in meetings - instead, do this...
Learn this way to consult with people (without endless meetings)
Meeting SMALL changes everything - here's how to do it
How to shift an update meeting to async and give everyone deep work time back
Concept 2: Start Smart
How I activate people to prepare for meetings
How I get people to do the friggin prep for meetings I lead 🤦♀️
Concept 3: Structure for flow
Introduction to scaffolding - 13 techniques I use all the time
A 90-second tool for adding helpful structure to a meeting
How to change a meeting you're not leading
A creative technique for resetting a regular meeting that has 'got lost'
Concept 4: Strong space
3 ways to open a meeting with psychological safety
Over-talkers: the most common meeting challenge people bring to me
My 3-step conversation pattern for handling unhelpful behaviour in meetings
A conversation pattern for resolving under-the-surface tension
Concept 5: Capture the value
A simple format for capturing the value of every meeting
How to use AI to write (good) meeting notes
How to change meetings in the real world
The simplest way to improve any meeting
The only 6 collaboration leadership skills you will ever need
Session 2 guides
>> 📌 Session 2 cheatsheet! <<
What is psychological safety - or psychological strength?
49 everyday things that break psychological safety (from my own personal fail list)
Your organisation is probably in parent-child mode - and this will explain a lot
Use meetings to create a safe to fail culture
What is "psychological strength" in teams?
Psychologically strong teams and how to develop one
Be a sturdy leader who creates safe spaces
You're in charge... but not in control. (Help!)
Rupture at work is mandatory - here is how to repair
Create psychologically safe interactions with scaffolding
3 ways to open a meeting with psychological safety
The single agile technique you can use to improve any meeting, session or collaboration
A conversation pattern for resolving under-the-surface tension
How to excavate what your team really thinks before it sinks your project
How to boundary the unhelpful behaviours of others
3 ways to open a meeting with psychological safety
How I handle obnoxious questions in meetings
Over-talkers: the most common meeting challenge people bring to me
My 3-step conversation pattern for handling unhelpful behaviour in meetings
How I handle leaders who disrupt the session they asked me to run 😵
Your AI prompt guide
Making changes to meetings takes time - these AI prompts to help you implement what you learn in each session including:
- Prompts to do the heavy lifting designing and preparing focused, energising meetings. From 60 minutes to 6 minutes prep.
- My go-to meeting summary prompt for very specific and concise notes (rather than reams of GenAI waffle and all those subheadings 😵). Bonus: AI will fill in gaps, flag up risks and make recommendations - adding value, not just recording the content of the meeting.
- How I use AI to help me improve my leadership and address issues in my teams, using meeting transcripts
Scaffolding playbook
Browse 20+ ideas for meeting scaffolds that hear all voices rapidly.
