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…

Dancing with pirates: how to build teams that listen

The Pirates of Penzance

“Better be a pirate than join the Navy” Steve Jobs

Lost in translation

A few years ago I was interviewing a young man from Eastern Europe who had applied to join a leadership programme. As I listened to him talking about his experience of working with communities, I had the feeling that he could easily have acquired his knowledge from one of the courses I used to deliver in CIS countries. He described the very tools and methods I used to teach. But from the tone of his voice it seemed to me that the western approach to community development with its emphasis on stakeholder engagement meant nothing to him. It dawned on me that I had made a living from peddling expensive training programmes that did nothing to help the people for whom they were designed. This made me feel very uncomfortable.

“It’s only a game”

Painful as this was, I put my learning to good use recently while working once again in Eastern Europe with a group of senior managers. This time, instead of delivering a set programme, I found myself dancing with pirates. On the first night the trainers and the participants sat across a table, sizing each other up like rival gangs. By way of an informal ice-breaker I tried a simple ‘getting to know you’ type exercise. “Is the training beginning already?” said Pirate Jenny, suspiciously.  “It’s just a game”, I said. The game took so long that it felt like the 30 Years War. “It’s just a game!” said the Pirate King, with a twinkle in his eye. This was the first of many skirmishes between the navy (me and my co-facilitator) and the pirates (the participants). Would the pirates play the game, we wondered, or would they make us walk the plank?

Forming a working alliance

On the second day, we danced a number of rounds using different methodologies. These included postcards, tennis balls, a hoola-hoop, a walk in the woods, and a visit to a local winery. Little by little, we persuaded the pirates to dance with us, and with each other. It was the week-end, after all, and who wants to work on the week-end. The process was similar to what some coaching professionals call “getting alongside the client” and “forming a working alliance”. We, the navy, moored our ship next to the pirates’ galleon. Very quickly they invited us on board. We got to know and like each other. How did this happen?

A picture says more than a 1000 words

I remember a number of breakthrough moments when the conversation flowed naturally, and it seemed to me that we were really learning together. The first such moment happened when we asked the pirates to choose a picture that said something to them about leadership. The pirates chose their pictures carefully, and all of a sudden they were talking to each other and to us about their personal visions of leadership. They shared some quite personal reflections and insights into leadership. Then, without any prompting from the facilitators, the participants volunteered the fact that we had got them talking and listening to each other. Lunch felt a lot more relaxed than supper the previous evening. We had begun to form a working alliance.

Into the woods

In the afternoon the navy and the pirates made up a joint reconnaissance party, and sashayed into the woods. Spring was turning into summer. The bees were buzzing, the sheep were grazing and tiny red flowers refused to be identified in the thick long grass. We sat on a hillside and talked sporadically like characters in a Chekhov play. That night the navy and the pirates partied until 3.00 am. We danced together for hours. This time the dancing was real.

Dancing in our heads

On the final day of the workshop we threw out large parts of our carefully designed workshop. We kept one methodology and one game that we thought fitted perfectly with the group narratives about storytelling, inspiring people and working less while earning more. The high point for me was the moment I noticed we had been standing in a circle in the garden for a long time. We were talking about how to inspire and engage people and somehow it felt completely natural and learner led. No-one sat down, and no-one left. We were dancing in our heads.