Meeting Facilitation

When is Facilitation Needed?

Team coaching and facilitation provides the forum for presidents to experience the challenge and support of their executive team, and for vice presidents to think beyond their departments, for the good of the whole company. To bring a systems view.

Executive vice presidents and other senior leaders are required to create results for each of their areas of expertise. Who pulls it all together? The President or CEO naturally binds the competencies, goals and accomplishments of each department into a coherent whole.

Team coaching helps the company be even more successful when Vice Presidents share more responsibility and have more opportunity to contribute for the whole. When company success and growth are concerned, everyone in the room has a stake professionally and personally. Presidents experience relief and VP’s experience the satisfaction of digging deeply into options, offering recommendations and making meaningful contributions, as a result of team coaching.

That’s the forum a team coach and facilitator creates.

What does a facilitator do?

A team coach and facilitator increases the impact and effectiveness of leadership teams by increasing idea sharing and subsequent commitment to decisions.

A team coach and facilitator collaboratively plans an event to achieve client goals.

During the event, the team coach and facilitator guides, challenges and encourages all participants to bring their expertise, innovation, curiosity and respect for others’ opinions. The team coach and facilitator keeps the conversation on-track, providing for all participants to be engaged in problem-solving, innovation or creating new directions. The facilitator brings frameworks and activities to foster creative problem-solving and achieve goals.

Sometimes VP’s are not aligned, or have seemingly competing goals. For a company to be more successful, they all need to be rowing in the same direction. That calls for a facilitated meeting to explore options, differences, and criteria that matter most for the outcome. Group facilitation provides a forum for the discussion of ideas, priority setting, strategic direction, decision making, and other process issues.

A facilitator manages the energy in the room, changing pace before cell phones are retrieved to relieve boredom or anxiety. A coach looks for these and other clues that momentum is flagging. There is always a constructive approach to take a break, add some humor, or modify the agenda to reengage participants.

When you get process right, the content flows. Team coaches manage the process while you bring and build on content to create desired outcomes.

How does facilitation help?

A facilitated meeting allows for the contribution of all the brains in the room. In some groups, people take on roles of being the outspoken one, the quiet observer, the cheerleader, or devil’s advocate. These habits may be outside of their own awareness, but visible to others. Team coaching helps the individuals and the group benefit from exploring outside of their habitual style to discover new ways of participating which results in creating new ideas. Everyone wins.

A team coach does not have an outcome goal but rather supports a group in achieving their outcome goals. That often includes clear articulation of the issue to be addressed (growth, reorganization, mission), decision criteria, and decision-making processes.

The team coach holds responsibility for the process goal: to include disparate perspectives, invite participation by all those present, encourage awareness of each person’s effective participation, stop recurring debates that are known dead-ends, and acknowledge tangents without letting them run the meeting. A team coach allows differences to be articulated without allowing personal attacks, and takes into account different learning styles. After all, a facilitated meeting is a learning opportunity.

A facilitated forum allows for everyone’s contribution to be valued regardless of disparate lengths of service, area of expertise, or past conflicts.

What kind of preparation is needed?

A meeting sponsor or subcommittee participates in the creation of the outcome with the team coach. The team coach offers activities and frameworks to optimize the outcome goals. The committee reviews these and delves deeper into decision styles and the nature of the high stakes outcomes, risks and potential conflicts or unknowns. Part of the preparation is for the facilitator to understand the nuance of participants’ styles and preferences for making contributions.

Preparation includes acquiring background about significant organization history so as not to be blindsided by some shocking but old news.

Can’t one of the executive team run the meeting?

Yes.

Often it’s easier for an outside facilitator to provide this process skill, than for the president or another executive team member to wear two hats during such important conversations, even if they have the ability. Those two hats are seemingly contradictory: being passionate and decisive about direction, and being open to input and modification. Presidents have all the responsibility on their shoulders; a team coach  lets that responsibility be more explicitly shared. It is more effective when all participants can be fully present to participate rather than hold dual responsibility for managing the group process and the business outcome.

One of the key attributes of engaged teams is for them to have the experience of being a valued participant.  Having a team coach provide this kind of engaging forum frees participants to explore options.  An engaged team produces better results, increases commitment, and retention.

What are the benefits of a facilitated meeting?

A facilitated meeting which is flexible yet focused helps executive team participants understand where they may be to reach a solution or decision, or what is needed before that can be accomplished. It is a forum to determine whether that commitment is going to be a mandate, a compromise or a negotiated solution. These important discussions flow best when these issues are identified and articulated, rather than remain below the radar. A team coach can provide guard-rails to ensure all voices are heard, based on an in-depth understanding of the issues being faced, without having a personal agenda.

Commitment and buy-in result from the synthesis of great ideas. Decisions stick when they are thoroughly considered and incorporate the best ideas regardless of who has started the idea generation and who has added to it.

Some situations that benefit from team coaching and facilitation:

• Board Meetings and Board Development
• Strategic Planning retreat
• New team kick-off
• Company-wide retreat
• Reorganization
• Problem solving
• Employee focus groups

Also see Gestalt group process, Graphic facilitation and Facilitation for Leaders