Facilitating Meetings

Benefits

“If everyone is moving forward together, 

             then success takes care of itself” (Henry Ford).  

Cooperation in a group does not just happen when people get together to, “Talk things over.”  Good meetings don’t just happen.  A productive meeting is a carefully crafted process.  Facilitators make meetings work by designing and implementing that careful process.  It is also a personally satisfying experience when you, as the meeting facilitator, bring out the best in people and can help a team improve its performance.  And the ability to build collaborations among diverse stakeholders is leadership skill.  Be recognized as a person with that leadership ability.

What This Workshop is About

A study by Microsoft® pointed to worthless meetings as a major time waster in America. Respondents in their survey spend 5.6 hours each week in meetings and 71 percent of these people thought those meetings “…aren’t productive.” This course is intended for anyone who wants to increase their personal effectiveness as well as improve meeting productivity.  You will learn basic and advanced facilitation skills to create shorter meetings, produce a concrete work product or firm decision, build positive working relationships among meeting participants, and deal with difficult situations such as an audience that does not have the instinct to cooperate.  This course covers four kinds of meetings:  Information Sharing—facilitation techniques to respectfully manage a dialogue for sharing different points of view as well as presenting an outgoing message when there is no expectation for dialogue.  Idea Generation—facilitation techniques to generate new information, ideas, options, solutions, etc.   Evaluations—facilitation techniques to evaluate the merits of alternative information, ideas, options, solutions, etc.  Decision Making—facilitation techniques to get a group to make a positive and firm decision by the end of a meeting.  This course covers,

• Meetings as decision-making events, not just discussion sessions.

• Best management practices for moderating respectful conversations, creating the right setting for a meeting, designing group processes, etc.

• Designing meetings-by-objectives and transforming agendas from a list of topics into a work plan for the meeting.

• The four core types of meetings and how to succeed with each.

• A facilitator’s toolkit of techniques to actively engage meeting participants in creating a concrete outcome by the end of the meeting.

• Dealing with difficult people and difficult behaviors.

• Facilitator communication skills.

Who This Course is For

What is unique in this course?

This course focuses on improving group performance, not just moderating a discussion.  With extensive practice during the workshop, you walk out having applied the skills and having received coaching on how to improve.  We combine the core curriculum with the participants’ own knowledge and experience to translate learning to your real-world situations.  Because the course proceeds from simple to complex facilitations, you have a grounding on how to handle a range of meeting complexities.  And we sharply focus on how to define the tangible and concrete deliverable that is wanted by the end of the meeting, matching that with the right meeting design, and then managing the group process to achieve that meeting objective.  Participants devote about 50% or their time practicing the skills taught and receiving constructive feedback for improvement from the instructor and peers.

What You Can Expect in All Our Workshops

Teaching Model

We use a Tell → Show → Do → Teach-Back Model

• Tell: We present what we know about the skills being taught.

• Show: We demonstrate how the skills are applied through lecture, exercises, facilitated discussion, etc.

• Do: We have participants practice the skills using team assignments, role plays, mock activities, etc.

• Teach-Back: We wrap up topics with peer-to-peer and instructor advice on how to apply the new skills in the real-world.

How We Present This Material

We come to you and present at your work site or offer remote teaching using Internet sharing tools when appropriate.  We use discussion, exercises, lecture, and mock exercises to combine our experience with your staff’s experience and create a dynamic, fun, and highly interactive training.

Transform Your Staff

Learning is not complete until there is application.  We ask participants to discuss how they can maintain the momentum in their organization after we, as trainers, leave.  We also share our ideas on how to form ‘Master Mind’ groups and other supports so participants have a community of knowledgeable peers who can help one another successfully apply the skills after the course.  We also make ourselves available after the event for short consultations for brainstorming solutions, problem solving, etc. for free.

Customization