Top 10 Meeting Facilitation Tips
Knowing how to run an effective meeting and facilitate a workshop are increasingly important skills for business professionals and managers. Here, We have listed 10 of the best meeting facilitation tips to boost your own facilitation skills and improve the meeting facilitation capabilities across your business.
“Have a plan. Specify your desired outcomes. What do you want to achieve? Make sure you decide on these before the event.”
“Have a process in place to evaluate the tangibility of your plan. Prepare to be flexible but be clear about how individual group members will be involved at every stage.”
“People are different. They engage, communicate and learn in different ways. Provide participation in a way that accommodates for this diversity.”
“Don’t be afraid to run a number of different activities. Keep participants active, both mentally and physically.”
“Take questions on board but always bounce them back to the audience for an answer. Don’t answer them yourself. To facilitate is not to lead.”
“Use any disagreements as a way of better understanding the debate. Keep focused on the issues and avoid bickering about blame and personality.”
“Differentiate your thoughts and opinions and focus instead on concerns of group members. Make sure you are hearing every voice in the room. If there is a voice not being heard, work to draw it out. ”
“Help the group explore the stories and metaphors they use to explain their situation. This can generate insight and help move things forward.”
“Ask open questions and invite people to say more through effective body language.”
“Understand the difference between being muted from the discussion and being overly passive. The most important thing is to be constructive and add value to the meeting.”