Executive Overview | Meeting Design | Meeting Roles | Facilitation Techniques
What is the business case for effective meetings?
First, let us recognize that, in general, meetings are a huge waste of resources. The opportunity cost of bringing people together – even virtually – to talk about an issue [...]
Misconceptions about Facilitation
The Institute of Cultural Affairs in Belgium identified five common misconceptions about facilitation. Facilitation is another name for training. In training, information flows primarily from the trainer to the [...]
The Truth about Facilitation Skills
A facilitator is a process leader who partners with a task leader to design and execute a group event that meets agreed-to outcomes and deliverables. The following sources were [...]
The Benefits of Facilitation
Benefit #1: Facilitation improves meeting outcomes. Improving meeting outcomes is one way of increasing the return on investment for meetings. The meeting investment is the sum of the salary [...]
Not All Business Meetings are Alike
Generalizing about meetings – whether to complain or to recommend “best practices” - is easy. What is challenging is to recognize and respond to the ways in which meetings differ. [...]
The Leadership Team’s Guide to Making the Meta Decision
This post is excerpted from the article Making Decisions in Meetings, originally published on the Lucid Meeting blog. Making good decisions is one of the leadership team’s primary job responsibilities. [...]
When facilitation is not the answer
Facilitation, understood as designing and leading a participatory group process, can have a transformative effect. In the hands of a skilled professional, a facilitated process can help a group discuss [...]
Meeting mistake 1: Unclear objective
If the objective or main purpose of the meeting is not clear, participants will not grasp why they should attend. Or you might invite the wrong people. Example of an [...]
Meeting mistake 2: Invite the wrong people
It is not necessary or useful to invite the whole team to every meeting. When the meeting objective and the topics on the agenda are of no relevance to them, [...]
Meeting mistake 3: Beginning and ending late
In many organizations lack of punctuality at the beginning and end of meetings is so common that it has become the norm. Some participants arrive at the scheduled time… and [...]
Meeting mistake 4: No written agenda
If you want your staff to arrive on time, ready to contribute to the objective announced in the invitation, you must prepare an agenda in advance and, when possible, share [...]
Meeting mistake 5: All talk and no action
Workplace meetings are not just for talking… and talking… and talking without arriving at a conclusion. To avoid the waste of time and energy caused by interminable speeches, you first [...]