2. Take 5 minutes and write about a successful meeting
you participated in.
Describe what the meeting was about.
What key decisions needed to be made?
What happened that enabled the meeting to be a
success?
What makes a successful meeting?
3. • Design & Plan
• Guide & Manage:
Engage Participants
Acquire Support
Make Decisions
• Record
• Accountability
What does a Facilitator do?
13. Description:
Joker/Wisecrack
Questions within questions
Topics out of context
Strategy:
1. Acknowledge them
momentarily
2. Reiterate topic being discussed
and goal
The Distractor/Attention Seeker
14. Description:
Finds fault on everything
Negative
Gripe
Strategy:
Don't coax or show pity
Talk about benefits
Turn it back to them
The Skeptic
Welcome the group and give them an overview of what you are covering. Have a big sticky ready and have them introduce themselves:NameDepartment and titleExperience in facilitatingGoal for today’s classMake sure to write out their goals on the sticky. Big Sticky
After the class completed the activity, ask for volunteers to share what they wrote. Be sure to ask why they were able to make the key decisions/meet the meeting objectives and what role did the facilitator have in making the meeting a success?Write these out on the sticky.This exercise gets the participant to reflect on prior experience. It helps them step back from that experience and refer back later as we go over discussions about the topics covered in the course.Big Sticky
The definition of facilitate is "to make easy" or "ease a process". The bulk of your responsibility is then to:Design and plan the group process, and select the tools that best help the group progress towards that outcome.Guide and manage the group process to ensure that:There is effective participation.Participants achieve a mutual understanding.Their contributions are considered and included in the ideas, solutions or decisions that emerge.Participants take shared responsibility for the outcome.Ensure that outcomes, actions and questions are properly recorded and actioned, and appropriately dealt with afterwards.
Ask the class - write answers on a big sticky. As a participant, do you trust in the facilitator? What else do they do that you don’t see too many facilitators do? They actively engage the participants!Possible Answers: Provide some follow up thoughts that you have as to why these are important or ask the audience. Great listenersSupport - who is the focus of the meeting? The participants. Making Everyone feel comfortable and valuedEncouraging participationPreventing and managing conflictListening and observingOrganized & PreparedThey need to remain objectiveCredibilityRapportBig Sticky
This is a video on Focus & Outcome by Jon Petz, author of Boring Meetings Suck.It’s an introduction that gets the participants of the class thinking about how they come up with a meeting agenda. He goes over focused objectives that is targeted towards outcomes in meetings. This is a segway to the next slide.
When designing and planning your meetings it's important to keep in mind always the outcome – and how you are helping the group reach it. Make sure you are clear about both the desired outcome and process for each one. And make sure you know how the outcome of each session or topic contributes to the outcome of the event overall.What is it that you want to get done? Why does it need to be done?How will you get it done in the meeting?Answers to these questions must be specific. Why do you think that it is? Look for: Most likely your meeting participants will ask these questions.By being able to answer these questions, the participants of the class learn to analyze their objectives carefully to:Focus on must-do’s of the meetings Figure out if they have enough time to cover what they planned forAnticipate possible questions their participants may have in those meetingsPossible exercise if time permits: 15 minutesPrior to class, let the participants know that they should think about a future meeting they will be facilitating. When you get to this portion of the class, have them take 5 minutes to go over 3 agenda topics (what). They should be able to answer these questions. For those who don’t have any meetings they will be facilitating in the future – have them partner up.After the participants are done ask for 2-3 volunteers to share.
It’s important to know who your participants are in the meeting:Who they are? What role do they play in the meeting?What are their goals? You need to know this so that you can help engage them. How is this going to affect them?Why is it important to get their feedback in the meeting? Are they the SME?
Information and materials – What do participants need to know before or at the event? How will this be provided and when? Room arrangements – What room set-up will best encourage participation? Supplies – What supplies and props do you need? Pens, flip charts, post-it notes are just the starters – make sure you have everything you need for the agenda and process you've planned. And make sure you have backups for things like data projectors, just in case these fail.
At the start of the meeting, and throughout, your role is to use to ensure the meeting keeps progressing towards a successful outcome.First you have to set the ground rules – based on our validation sessions, what ground rules did you find was helpful in getting through the evaluation points? Post these ground rules to remind everyone.Reviewing the objectives and agenda sets expectations on what needs to be done for the meetingYou need to stay alert, listen actively and remain interested and engaged. Not only does this set an example to the other participants but it helps you stay ready to intervene in case the discussion starts swirling. Summarize constantly so that you can keep the group on focus achieve consensus on what’s being agreed upon. By doing this, you help everyone focus on the task at hand.
Tangents videoThis is a segway to beginning the next topic - challenging participants
Go over the hand out and ask the participants to identify traits and possible corrective measures. See the next slide 4 slides.
Traits and strategy is initially hidden. Ask the audience for possible traits.Click on the slide again so that the traits and strategy appears and go over the strategy. Ask the audience what they would say?Example:I think you’re making a good point. Let’s see how the rest of the team feels about that. Call on another person who has yet spoken up or you know is an SME.
Traits and strategy is initially hidden. Ask the audience for possible traits.Click on the slide again so that the traits and strategy appears and go over the strategy. Ask the audience what they would say?Example:That's a valid concern but it’s currently outside the scope of this meeting. But I'll note that so that we can follow up follow up later.
Traits and strategy is initially hidden. Ask the audience for possible traits.Click on the slide again so that the traits and strategy appears and go over the strategy. Ask the audience what they would say?Example:How would you handle this?How would you approach this differently?
Traits and strategy is initially hidden. Ask the audience for possible traits.Click on the slide again so that the traits and strategy appears and go over the strategy. Ask the audience what they would say?Example:Greg and Don - Vivian suggested we should have an excel sheet to track all these changes in the build. What do you guys think?
The parking lot video:He goes over proper use of parking lot. After the video, discuss what responsibilities the facilitator have with regards to the parking lot:Follow UpCapturing important information
This is to recap lessons learned from the course and open it up for questions they may have.
