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Phase: Meeting Facilitation

Facilitation phase

  1. So you made it. You're actually at your meeting. You've done all the preparation. You made sure the right people are there.

  2. It is good practise to remind the meeting facilitators when you start a meeting, always make sure you cover the ground rules, gentle reminders. I usually like to include this at the top of the meeting agenda page in Confluence.

  3. In the meeting you can say here are the three or four things that we agreed to follow. That we're not going to talk over each other. We're going to make sure we raise our hands if we want to say something.

  4. These are little things that, again, as a quick reminder allow people to become conscious of it and realize, "All right. This is how we act when we're together." So again, always make sure you cover those ground rules.

  5. To me each meeting needs a scribe. Honestly, it's difficult for anyone to take notes and facilitate the same time. This is also a very clever way to help bring in participation from the people in the room. Find someone who can help you take notes.

  6. Another clever thing to do is let's say you have one of those individuals in your meeting that really likes to kind of take the stage. Maybe they're always kind of breaking your ground rules. A good way to get them engaged in a positive way is ask them to be the note-taker.

  7. Have them being engaged and the whole flow of the meeting by being that note-taker. And it's one of the things that will help keep them focused on something that's adding value to that meeting.

  8. Be the facilitator. This means that in the conversation, make sure you're putting that facilitator hat on and not necessarily jumping into the content.

  9. A lot of times, the facilitator can get themselves deep into a conversation and then all of a sudden, 15, 20, 30 minutes goes by because they're so deep in the conversation that they forgot to pay attention to the clock.

  10. If you find that you're in a topic that you need to engage with, actually ask your group, "I need someone to play facilitator for the next topic because I need to engage in that."

  11. Get someone to be that timekeeper, that person who's gonna keep you focused. It's huge because it'll also again show that you respect people's time and want to get to all the topics.

  12. Make sure you know when to break the rules. I say this because one of the things that you probably seen in meetings is you get a facilitator who is running a meeting by the book, when something maybe truly more pressing comes up. And says "Nope, we got to keep your schedule."

  13. Knowing when to break the rules and how to ask the team permission to break the rules is key be willing to kind of sense and adapt as you go.

  14. Again use your rules as your guide, but don't be so rigid in those that all the sudden you lead people in the end to still feel like we didn't cover the right thing.

  15. Some of my best meetings have come out in the end where they said, you know what I'm glad we switch to that topic because we needed to at that point.

  16. So just a few things to keep in mind as you're facilitating. It's your responsibility to be a good listener. Be aware of the conversation going on and help advance discussion when needed.

  17. Know how to draw your participants back in if things start to wander a bit and be mindful the topics and time just to make sure everything stays on track.

Going back to the four principles. Those are some tips for better facilitation next. Let's move to participation.

How to facilitate a meeting?

  1. Start a meeting by covering the ground rules.

  2. Have someone else be the scribe.

  3. Be the facilitator.

  4. Know when to break the rules.

Tips to keep in mind as you facilitate

  1. Be a good listener. Do not talk over each other.

  2. Help advance the discussion.

  3. Draw participants back in.

  4. Be mindguful of topics and time.