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Meeting Skills 2 - Facilitation

by Donna Lee - MSc. Director, Sorach Inc.

The first article described simple rules to improve meeting productivity. This article delves a little deeper into meeting skills required to produce the desired results. Meeting facilitation is required for efficiency and productivity. This article describes what facilitation is and the role of the facilitator.

A facilitator’s job is to get the best possible value from a meeting. Facilitation skills are not difficult to learn, however practice is required to be able to think on your feet, diagnose and take action if the meeting is not proceeding as expected. Good observation skills, such as reading body language, are helpful. A facilitator needs to create a balanced contribution environment so that some participants do not hijack the meeting and all participants contribute to the meeting in the best possible manner.

A facilitator is the ‘captain of the ship’. He does not determine the mission, but is responsible for reaching the predetermined destination. The facilitator needs to ensure that the meeting objectives are worked towards vigorously by all, and the required results are achieved. The meeting objectives must me clear and detailed so that the facilitator can help to attain them.

A facilitator has the following basic responsibilities:

Each of the above responsibility needs significant discussion, however here I will describe them briefly.

Logistics

Meeting logistics include time, duration, locations, agenda, introduction to the main stakeholders, breaks, refreshments meals, visits, tours, location of phones, parking, washrooms and things like those. Often this type of information has to be repeated during the meeting sessions as it is rare to find that everyone was listening attentively the first time. A printed handout can simplify the dissemination of this type of information.

Process

Choice of the right process of conducting a meeting can make or break the meeting. The choice of the process must consider the following:

The number of participants, time allocated, culture of the participants, type of meeting objectives and the type of facilities available.

Process Leader

The facilitator is responsible for the choice of the process and for the success of this process in attaining the objectives of the meeting as set by the stake holders. The facilitator is also the conductor of the process.

Keeping the meeting on track

This is the skill that differentiates an experienced facilitator from a novice. People have varied personalities and may get off-track due a multitude of reasons. The reasons can be: forgetting the objective of the meeting and getting into detailed discussion about a technical issue, personality of a talkative or overly assertive person, discussion of a recent hot topic in the organization that is unrelated to the meeting objectives and so on. Techniques can be learned to deal with most of such situations and personalities.

Consensus building

This is important for any meeting because without a good consensus, the outcomes of the meeting are unlikely to be implemented effectively. Consensus building can be done by facilitating techniques and some tools that are available.

Work within the social and political context of the participants

All organizations are different, knowing the comfort zone with technology and processes is important in selecting the process. The degree of formality expected should be respected in order to maintain the credibility of the facilitation process even if the facilitation is used to bring the participants out of their comfort zone eventually.

Delivery of results

This generally a straightforward activity once the meeting has been successful in producing the results, however the work involved in finalizing the deliverables should not be underestimated. It is a good practice to get volunteers for this work. Most of this work is likely to happen after the meeting session/s are over. This work can consist of organizing the ideas and material from the meeting, following up on the action item generate in the meeting and dealing with the ‘parking lot’ items that may need research or other type of follow-up. Detailed meeting minutes should always be produced and distributed to document the meeting.

This article provides an overview of the responsibilities of a facilitator. Unless you have access to outside facilitators, developing facilitation skills within your organization is essential. Facilitated meetings are one of the best ways to improve the efficiency of an organization.

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