Do your Leadership Team meetings
achieve their objectives?
Are you planning a Leadership
Team retreat where everyone in the room needs to participate in the
content and not have to worry about conducting the meeting?
Do you need a neutral third
party to help your team work through sticky issues?
I have had a
great deal of experience and success facilitating Leadership Teams
through a wide variety of planning and problem-solving meetings lasting from a
few hours to a week or more. I take great pride in helping
teams arrive at consensus solutions where there are troublesome issues
involved and no one is sure a consensus can be reached.
Advance planning for a
successful facilitation usually involves
- Getting a clear purpose and set of objectives
for the meeting
- Determining who should attend
- Deciding who will make decisions and how they
will be made
- Defining any special roles (e.g., content
expert)
- Establishing the meeting agenda, process, and
ground rules
- Planning premeeting activities, communication,
support materials, etc.
Some of the elements of my
facilitation style include
- Making sure everyone is on board with purpose,
objectives, roles, and ground rules
- Allowing time for introductions and getting
acquainted if the players are not familiar with one another
- Recognizing that people often come with their
own agenda and need a little time to make a speech to get it off their
chest
- Keeping the meeting on track without shutting
people off too quickly when they stray down seemingly off-track paths
- Keeping everyone engaged and participating
- Checking for consensus and bringing closure
- Keeping a "parking lot" list for extraneous
issues that need to be remembered
- Keeping an "action list"
- Using flipcharts and/or an LCD projector
(operated by someone else) to take notes
- Not using a lot of "cute" facilitation tricks
- Offering ideas and solution options when the
group is stuck or missing an important option
- Ending the meeting with everyone giving
personal feedback on the meeting accomplishments and process
If desired, I will document the
meeting, sometimes bringing a documenter along to take the notes on
flipchart and/or computer with LCD projector. For really important
meetings, the person I bring often serves as a process monitor to watch
the group process and individual participation for me while I conduct
the meeting.
