Natural Facilitation: How to design better meetings

Who likes going to meetings? Honestly? Good facilitation can make the difference between having a productive and enjoyable meeting, and having to start all over again. As a facilitator, my aim is to create the best possible experience for my client, and for the meeting delegates. Here are some of the principles and approaches I keep in mind when designing meetings. 

How to design better meetings

1 Get to know your client and their needs

You can’t prepare for every eventuality, but building a good working relationship with your client will make it easier for you to work through any difficulties together.

Action

Clarify these questions

• What is the purpose of the meeting?
• What are the key topics and isssues?
• Where do we need consensus and where do we need agreement?

2 Invite the right people

The quality of the meeting outcomes will depend on the depth and breadth of perspectives and expertise in the room.

Action

Strive for diversity and balance. Reach out to experts from different sectors and geographical regions.

3 Have confidence in your approach to facilitation.

Establish what feels comfortable to your client in terms of approach, tools and methods. Then make a case for what works for you.

4 Identify, and share in advance, the critical information that delegates will need to perform well at the meeting

Action

• Don’t assume delegates will have read documentation before the meeting.
• Distribute printed copies of critical information on the day.
• Not printing documents to reduce the meeting footprint could be a false economy. You may save a tree, and lose your meeting.

5 Create a natural working environment

The way a room looks and feels will impact on the performance of the participants.

Action

There are laws against keeping animals in cramped spaces. We should treat people in the same way.

Aim for a room with a high ceiling, natural light, tables and chairs, and, very important, free wall space, where you can hang flip charts. 

You will also need an adjacent free space for different types of activity (either indoors or outdoors). Create evenly spaced table groups of 5-6 or 10-12 depending on the size of the event. Try to get round tables.

6 Be a good host

How you meet and greet participants can have a huge impact on how people behave for the rest of the meeting.

Action

Make delegates feel truly welcome, and special, by having a word with each individual when they arrive. Your subliminal message must be: “I am so pleased to meet you, at this best of all possible meetings. You have all the skills and experience to help make it a success”.

7 Encourage dialogue and networking

Design-in formal and informal opportunities for participants to get to know and learn from each other.

Action

Insist on time for participants to introduce themselves to the group, and to state their expectations. Build two minute time slots into the meeting schedule for participants to talk about their work. After refreshment breaks, twice a day, will help to keep delegates engaged and interested.

8 Take a lesson from Napoleon Bonaparte. Reportedly, one of Napoleon’s tactics was ‘Reculer pour mieux sauter’, which in English, roughly translated, means, ‘Take a step back in order to jump further forward’.

Action

Just when you think you are close to achieving the meeting objectives, things have a way of coming undone. This is actually a sign that the group is fully engaged with the topic, and wants to get things right. The facilitator’s job is to offer the group a process that will help them to clarify the outstanding issues and consolidate their work so far. Be prepared to throw away the schedule for an hour or two. 

9 Learning and having fun

In my experience groups that are learning and having fun, tend to be the most engaged and productive. Notice what energises the group, and work with it. Surprise the group, confound their expectations with questions and observations that nudge them to see and think differently.

How to tell if delegates are engaged and having fun?

If you have followed the principles above then, probably your delegates will be happy as Napoleon. How can you tell? Here some indicators:

• When groups burst into life when given a task
• When groups don’t want to finish working on a task
• When delegates change places willingly
• When there is spontaneous laughter in the room
• When delegates stay in the room long after the meeting talking to each other.

10 Whose Agenda is it anyway?

When a group sticks with a challenging task and gets a good result, they experience a well-earned sense of pride in their achievements. Your job is done.

To paraphrase Lao Tse, when the meeting objectives have been fulfilled, and the delegates think they did this by themselves, the facilitator’s work is done…

i-Facilitation or Open Source? Why facilitators should give learning away

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At a recent gathering of facilitators organized by AMED and the IAF I found myself thinking comparatively deeply. The cause of this creative thinking was a question:

“What are the challenges of building learning capacity in our clients teams and organizations for our profession (facilitators)?”

It took me a little while to understand the question. The challenge seemed to be whether or not facilitators should make themselves redundant by helping their clients to become more effective.

Facilitation to what end?

Idealist that I am, my immediate reaction was to blurt out that people who facilitate learning teams have a duty to develop people, teams and organisations. This line of thinking led me to more questions. What are my principles and values as a facilitator? Why do I facilitate? To what end?

Sustainability or dependency

My work as a facilitator is mainly about building leadership capacity in the context of sustainable development and climate change. If I believe that people are the key to creating a more equitable and sustainable world, then I must be happy when people learn how to do things without me. My approach to learning and leadership is best summed up by a quote from Lao Tse.

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”

When I am working with groups I want them to take stuff away and to feel confident enough to use whatever they have found useful. When someone tells me they have used a tool that I taught them and it worked I am delighted. My aim is to get myself out of the way so that people can get on and change the world. Do I want to encourage dependency? Certainly not.

i-Facilitation or open source?

I remember years ago when I worked as a trainer for a charity, quite often our participants would ask for copies of training exercises. This caused a certain amount of angst in the office where I worked. Should we be giving away materials that had been developed for the charity? Were we doing ourselves out of a job?

The discussion at the AMED / IAF workshop made me think about different business models. Something I had read in a biography of Steve Jobs seemed relevant. Steve Jobs had vision of a walled garden where people bought products curated by Apple. Eventually this became i-tunes. What kind of garden do we want to have as facilitators? Closed or open source? Is it realistic to think that we can stop people from using our tools and models unless they pay a subscription to access to our (metaphorical) platform?

 What goes around comes around

I strongly believe that the more you give away, the more you will get back. If someone asks me for a concept or a training tool I am happy to share it. First of all I am pleased to be asked. Probably this means that they found it useful. Secondly, they most likely see an opportunity to use my materials to help their work with another group.  

The fact is most trainers and facilitators use concepts and models that have been developed by someone else. Few of us are so creative that we ‘own’ all our materials. If we want to build a more equitable society, the answer to the question posed at the workshop is a no-brainer. Give it away!