My personal definition of an effective meeting is one where the participants feel good about themselves and the group, willingly and openly share their ideas and concerns, work together constructively and positively, understand the outcomes they are working towards, and leave the meeting feeling fulfilled and glad to be part of the group. To have effective meetings you need two elements, a facilitator and a group ready to work together.
When a group meets, it is extremely useful to have meeting process direction come from either a single person, or from within the group itself. Without process direction, lots of time and energy can be wasted.
In this model, a single person, or perhaps two people direct the process. The facilitator is not the leader of the meeting, she is a tool of the group, responsible for directing the process of the meeting, so the participants can focus on the content and achieving the outcome.
The facilitator must do some thinking ahead of the meeting, or the task at hand, about what kind of process will maximize the groups collaborative efforts to achieve the desired outcomes. Having an understanding of the processes useful towards helping groups accomplish their outcomes is the value and knowledge that the facilitator brings to the table. The facilitator may also need techniques and strategies to stimulate the group when it gets stuck, or to intervene to help the group function effectively.. By guiding the group through a process, the facilitator then frees up the group from having to worry about HOW to work together and instead the participants can focus their time and energy on the content of the issues being worked on. This of course does not mean the group has no input into the processes that are used, but that, in the best case scenario, very little group time and energy needs to be spent figuring out how to organize the time together.
In this model, the process that it used is brought out by the group itself, and group members take responsibility to keep each other on task, and intervene with each other. This method requires a large degree of cooperation among the group members about the processes to use so that group energy is not unduly wasted arguing over process.
In self facilitated groups, a small amount of time is spent to organize the processes of the group ahead of each task item, and then perhaps the group evaluates itself after each item to ensure the outcome was the one desired. The tasks of facilitation are spread among group members or members just organically pick up the facilitation task as needed.
Self facilitated groups need a great deal of member involvement, both in the details of the content and also in the running of the meeting. This duality works best with a group that has minimal interpersonal issues between members, and a stable, well trained membership.
Some groups rotate facilitation so each member gets a chance. In a small group this can work if each individual has the interest and desire to do this task. Putting your meetings in the hands of an untrained facilitator however can lead to ineffective and less than satisfying results. When groups rotate facilitation among untrained members of the group they often find meetings do not work very well. Sometimes participants get “stuck” facilitating the meeting that have no interest or skill in doing so, and this usually leads at best to a mediocre outcome. The worst case scenario for a group is when an untrained facilitator has to try and deal with a difficult or heated topic. The results are often very unsatisfactory and the group may have its decision making confidence undermined.
One way to create high quality facilitation is to train a small group of members in the science and art of facilitating and let them grow into excellent facilitators by training, reading, evaluating each other and facilitating several meetings in a row. By facilitating several meetings in a row, the facilitator can receive feedback, then apply it at the next meeting while it is fresh. One way to facilitate several meetings in a row is to have the same person facilitate the length of an entire issue. So if the childcare issue takes four meetings from start to finish, the same person facilitates that issue to its conclusion, thus offering the stability of facilitation, plus giving the facilitator a chance to work through the whole issue from start to finish. By observing high quality facilitation, the rest of the group members also get the benefits, and cross group training can also be done.
There is a synergy that happens on a facilitation team, when facilitators get together to share their skills and passions, it can spark greater interest and dedication to learning about group process and giving service to the group.
This is not to say that you want to create a facilitation cabal, the inaccessible high priesthood of process! In fact, you will always want to encourage folks to become more skilled in facilitation, this makes your work as facilitator of the group all that much more effective. So outreach of skills and ideas, debriefing and evaluating process work is an important task for the facilitator to engage the group in, so the information about meeting process is widely shared and understood. Facilitators can do small training sessions as part of meetings to both engage participants in the processes used, and also to rise skill levels.
There are sometimes fears and concerns among a group about specialization of facilitation in groups, that facilitators will somehow control the group or that every one should learn facilitation so you should rotate To encourage trust, if the facilitator contributes to the discussion, she should speak last and attempt to summarize what has been said. The facilitator must remain neutral on whatever issue is on the floor. Trust is the primary currency that the facilitator works with. If a group you facilitate believes you are using your position as facilitator to create processes that further a specific agenda, you will find facilitation will be frequently challenged. Many facilitators find it is better to give up interest in a topic than try to facilitate and give input. If the group has a facilitation team, then if one member feels strongly about the content, they can stand down as facilitator and let another team member facilitate the issue in question. By standing down, it shows the group that the facilitators are working hard to keep neutral on issues.
Facilitation is a set of skills that comes from observation, training and practice. There are sets of processes to organize groups which are useful to know, there are communication and social dynamic concepts and skills that can help facilitators understand what is going on, how to alert the group to the problems, and ideas for how to solve them. All of this education, and more, does not happen in one meeting. It may take several months of dedicated study and reading, and practice work, attending specialized workshops, and working with and watching other facilitators.
With a bit of training, most anyone can do a minimum job of structural facilitation. However, this may not be enough to make meetings really work well. The advanced work of dedicated facilitators is typically beyond the commitment that a casual facilitator would ever want to do. This advanced work is what really makes the group run well, has long term impacts on the morale of the group, and it is not at all apparent to most of the folks enjoying the meeting.
One solution to encouraging facilitation skills and learning among the group members is to do a co-facilitation approach, where a more experienced facilitator works directly with the less experienced person to coach them.
In larger groups it is often very difficult for one person to be able to keep up with all that is going on in a meeting. There are some facilitators are simply amazing in their ability to process things at many levels, capturing emotions, observing reactions, and remembering and giving instructions, calling on individuals, and writing down ideas. However, most of us can’t really do all this very well, and so having help is very much in the best interests both the facilitator and the group.
In some cases, especially in smaller groups, the whole group can be willing to be co-facilitator, helping the facilitator see the things she misses, or volunteering to take on roles such as writing down ideas, or keeping track of the time. In other cases, a second person can be specifically used as a co facilitator. This works best when both can meet ahead of time to clarify roles and responsibilities. You can use break time to debrief and plan ahead as well.
The facilitator has a crucial and demanding role and it can be helpful to thing of facilitation breaking into two sets of tasks. One set, the functional tasks, revolve around the mechanics of the meeting process. Structural meeting tasks include: organizing and checking in the agenda, directing the flow of discussion, summarizing points, and keeping the discussion on track, capturing ideas and digressions, assigning tasks and action items, and evaluating the meeting. Many groups have good structure but their meetings still don’t work very well.
The dynamic tasks of facilitation include supporting the emotions of the participants, intervening to solve dysfunctional or ineffective behaviors, delving into the roots of concerns and feelings, using positive reinforcement, humor, drama, icebreakers and numerous other tricks to keep the participants morale high and the group functioning at the optimum level. When combined with the structural elements of facilitation, dynamic facilitation adds a huge contribution to the morale of the group. Participants feel good about the group and themselves and this makes the meetings all that much better.
There are many training programs which are designed around structural meeting skills, especially for the business environment. There are far fewer programs which work with dynamics facilitation. Often these two task sets can be assigned to a different facilitator, so while one is focusing on the structure, the other can be focusing on the dynamics.