Facilitation for Leaders

Convening groups of talented people to create ideas and solutions is an essential activity of management. But say “meeting management” and many will run from the room. Meeting management is one element of this kind of leadership facilitation. There is more that a leader can offer by making meetings vibrant opportunities for contributions, idea generation, decision making, clarity and even a sense of teamwork and community.

Why are meetings dreaded when they involve important decisions in support of mission and actions impacting real people, employees and customers – yet movies of pretend characters in pretend scenarios are exciting?

Leaders need to portray the challenges that the business faces as compelling as any good plot line. And it’s already there: the race for innovation, for solving a medical crisis, for beating the competition to a deadline, providing superior service through superior appreciation of and engagement with employees, living in to social values like diversity and fairness. These are real life challenges with high stakes results. Meetings are exciting when these parameters are incorporated.

Meeting facilitation and team coaching is more than creating a focused agenda. This coaching involves creating an environment where participants are drawn to offer their contributions, have lively creative disagreements, get clarity, feel heard, offer their strengths, and leave with a plan. It is living into the values of inclusion, innovation and achievement.

Leader facilitation and team facilitation is more than skill development, it is a point of view, a consciousness of walking the talk of “our employees are our most important asset.” How is that commitment conveyed? Through a regular ongoing respect of ideas, treating outlier ideas like they were offered sincerely, even if they are not going to be implemented. Sharing criteria for not incorporating ideas or recommendations. Noticing those who go the extra mile.

An important job of the leader as facilitator is to be aware of energy. Are people’s concentration flagging? Is that one person taking way more than his allotted time? Has the meeting devolved into boring updates instead of challenging problem solving or decision making? Leader facilitators need to know when a change of pace is called for, when a topic needs to be saved for another day, when there is not enough information in the room to reach a decision, and when a group has done such a good job that you can adjourn early.

Skill development of facilitation for leaders, for the leader to become the team coach, can be offered as a workshop, or through observation of meetings and highlighting of opportunities and group strengths, followed by one-on-one coaching to experiment with new meeting design elements. These may include:

• Plan for the meeting, with a clear agenda
• Bring clarity to agenda items are being mandated, and which are open to discussion
• Involve participants in problem solving at an appropriate level
• Draw quiet members into the discussion
• Motivate through engagement
• Ensure disparate points of view are aired and discussed
• Identify what decisions have been made
• Explore how decisions will be reached
• Identify what is fixed and what is negotiable
• Clarify who is responsible for doing what by when