In our ongoing series, find methods for your needs curated from the SessionLab library. At the end of the day, facilitation is more of an art than a science. The more you do it, the more sophisticated your skills will become!

Often people do this unconsciously because they feel that the meeting isn't relevant for them. "Be present, or be elsewhere" is a good meeting guidelines to establish shared awareness and clear expectations one participants. Once the team starts to feel a regular social connection, they will be more apt to stay focused at staff meetings. Meeting ground rules for facilitators were thankfully left up to me as the GM (for the store-based ones), but having them in the first place was not optional. Equally important to setting expectations is getting them from your participants!

We’ve come a long way since Zimbardo’s prison; as the facilitator, you need to consider the rights of the participants. Making Meetings Workfrom the Collective Impact Forum is a blog post from Paul Schmitz discussing lessons we can apply to ensure that meetings are purposeful, engaging, and advance our work in ways that people anticipate with enthusiasm instead of dread. Encourage folks to share strategies, stories from the field, and lessons they've learned.

What is a good meeting?

Take a minute to thank people who prepared things for the meeting, set up the room, brought refreshments, or did any work towards making the meeting happen. Thank all of the participants for their input and energy and for making the meeting a success. Sometimes, people dominate a discussion because they are really passionate about an issue and have lots of things to say. One way to channel their interest is to suggest that they consider serving on a committee or task force on that issue. If someone like that shows up at your meeting, look further ahead in this chapter for some tips on dealing with "disrupters." Check with the group to make sure they agree with and like the agenda.

• Group facilitation with large or complicated groups especially ask for good time management skills.
• This is not helpful—your group members aren't participating, and they won't be discovering God's Word for themselves.
• When your discussion goes off on a tangent, acknowledge the new topic's importance, and suggest that you table the topic until later—either after the current discussion or after the meeting.
• Have catering arranged so food and drinks are available during breaks, and have the right workshop equipment at hand.
• Participants may also be anxious about the conversation or process.
• Painting the bigger picture of the workshop for the participants, and reiterating on it constantly.

Or in other words, it’s the process of making the team collaboration process easy, effective and enjoyable for the team members. Facilitation is the process of guiding the group through collecting relevant information, identifying underlying challenges, ideating possible solutions, and ultimately helping the team define and commit to the next steps. Level of involvement and commitment– Some individuals being uninvolved, passive, and not contributing to group decision making – either because they are left out or they hold back. What is the individual’s and the group’s responsibility for changing this. It is important for participants to see your eyes when you are delivering instructions or debriefing.

team building activities to bring your team together (and have fun!)

The article is very educative and will go a long way in helping my work. Clearly and sequentially explain the steps participants will take. Get all individuals in the room to feel like they are in a group with a shared interest.

When your discussion goes off on a tangent, acknowledge the new topic's importance, and suggest that you table the topic until later—either after the current discussion or after the meeting. Having people participate—even if their comments are off-topic—is a good thing. On the other hand, sometimes tangents lead to excellent discussions. Use discernment to determine if this tangent is something that your group members need.

How Can I Lead Great Small-Group Discussions?

Debriefing the experience at the end of each element is important. Using body language to control the dynamics in the room can be a great tool. Moving up close to a shy, quiet participant and asking them to speak may make them feel more willing, because they can look at you instead of the big group and feel less intimidated. Don't just stand in front of the room for the entire meeting.

Stimulate further discussion by responding to members' contributions. You can simply acknowledge their response (Thanks for sharing, Helen.), or you can ask guiding questions to clarify general or vague responses (What do you mean that you feel selfish? Can you flesh that out for us?). Be sure to respond to nonverbal communication agile team facilitation basic rules as well—some say up to 90 percent of communication is non-verbal. "Go for Quantity" is a great rule to establish before diving into a brainstorming session. Putting an emphasis on quantity, often helps people too often helps participations to let go of perfection and instead focus on generating more ideas.

They're in the room to help the team do their best work, not to show off how smart or cool they are. Helping the team articulate key ideas by using fitting facilitation techniques and frameworks. One last tool to have handy is an accountability, or RASCI chart, which identifies who is responsible for what in a project or implementation plan. RASCI is an acronym, standing for “Responsible, Approves, Supports, Consulted, Informed.” The Responsible person owns the problem or project.

Facilitation Basics

Therefore the primary job of a facilitator is to help the group achieve its goals by guiding them through an efficient and productive process. From this point, it would be an easy shortcut to say that the facilitator is the person doing facilitation. And to expand upon it, according to Google’s definition, a facilitator is a “person or thing that makes an action or process easy or easier”. Simply put, improving your facilitation skills and knowing when to bring in a facilitator is one of the best things you can to supercharge your facilitation career or be a better manager. Equal participation requires that every single participant feels welcomed and comfortable.

Then have a dedicated Q and A portion of the meeting at the end, with a set end time; that way it doesn’t just turn into an extended grouse-fest or argument that never ends. To chair a difficult meeting, I think it makes a big difference to let the team know ahead of time what is going to be discussed. The meetings that occurred outside my own stores often allowed me to see and visit with folks I didn’t get to see every day. Lastly, we had irregular national meetings; costly affairs where all top leaders from around the globe were flown somewhere for a 3 or 4-day gathering. If you consider the goal and how many get executed, you can see why in most cases, meetings are horribly inefficient. They are not the most productive way of accomplishing the mission.

Design your next workshop with SessionLab

In order to effectively process, the facilitator should ask open-ended questions based upon the group’s goals for the course. The facilitator should allow for open dialogue between all members, and may ask the group to sit in a circle so everyone is on the same level. Processing is an important part of being a challenge course facilitator and involves assisting the progress of participants as they integrate what they have learned from each activity. The facilitator’s responsibility is to create and foster a positive environment for the participants.

Good facilitation is more than following a script and rules; it’s knowing when and how to apply the rules and when to go off script to get the right data while balancing the needs of the stakeholders and participants. If folks seem restless or in a haze, you may need to take a break, or speed up or slow down the pace of the meeting. And if you see confused looks on too many faces, you may need to stop and check in with the group, to make sure that everyone knows where you are in the agenda and that the group is with you. People appreciate nothing more than a meeting that ends on time! It's usually a good idea to have some "closure" in a meeting, especially if it was long, if there were any sticky situations that caused tension, or if folks worked especially hard to come to decisions or make plans.

Principles of Remote Facilitation

We establish emotional connections with people, and hopefully create an environment in which others feel comfortable connecting emotionally with each other. We have some beliefs about, and hopefully we model, how people should be treated in the workplace—that they should be given a voice in their own futures, listened to with care and grace, and respected for the differences in their backgrounds and perspectives. We bring theory and knowledge to the work, which hopefully participants find relevant and useful. Ideally, the whole package of “us” is interesting and appealing, and invites participants to consider new ways to see their worlds, change their behaviors, and accomplish important goals.

Facilitators provide structure, direction, and guidance to a dialogue or process, but they do not manage people, issue commands, control discussions, regulate opinions, or determine outcomes. Generally speaking, facilitation is used to create a forum for groups of people to express their ideas, concerns, preferences, or priorities, while also listening to and considering the perspectives of others. Facilitators will support group work in organizations and communities by providing rules and structure, framing topics and issues, posing questions, keeping track of time, and recording the main ideas or outcomes that emerge from a dialogue or process.

If the participants are not comfortable with physical contact, you may need to move gradually into activities that require them to physically support others. If they seem to be disinterested, increase the challenge https://globalcloudteam.com/ of an activity to spark their enthusiasm. If you find that they are not planning or listening, you might try some introductory communication exercises. Participants look to the facilitator as the person in charge.

They also keep track of time and know when to move the group forward and when to end. Cell phone usage, unless it’s an emergency, has no place in meetings. Consider shorter, more focused meetings where you actually stand up with your team rather than sit. Show me a boss who feels like they have to be IN the business all the time and I’ll show you a micromanager who isn’t running their business as effectively as they could. Many a meeting has been held regarding topics that could just as easily been emailed. You can create many different lists, or queues, and share them with whoever you like.

But the thing is, you don’t need to be an expert in every industry to facilitate a good workshop. Just like we mentioned above, once you make the mindset shift from being the hero to being the guide, you’ll realize your role as a facilitator is not to solve the team’s challenges but to guide them through the decision-making process and unlock their abilities. Planning, guiding, and managing a workshop to ensure the team solves their challenge.

A difficult meeting could be one with a contentious topic such as cutting back on overtime or a change in the break policy, or the loss of some aspect of the benefits package. Going back to the store meetings I mentioned above, many of these topics are deathly dull; changes in HIPPA laws, changes to company 401k matching, etc. These were mandatory meetings of all store personnel and most of the time were held in the early morning hours. Improvisation is all about having a robust toolkit, mastering all of the facilitation techniques, and having a few facilitation tricks up your sleeve. It’s about being confident enough when things don’t go your way, and keeping your cool, instead of being flustered. Steering clear of professional jargon or local slang, even if you think the definitions you’re using are obvious to everyone.

Close the meeting

You never know if someone will want to comment and suggest something a little different. This builds a sense of ownership of the meeting and lets people know early on that you're there to facilitatetheir process and their meeting, not your own agenda. It is important to make everyone feel welcome and listened to at the beginning of the meeting.