Questions about Size Factors that Impact the Amount of Meeting Risk (2 of 5)

This is the second of a five-part discussion, providing a method for evaluating the relative risk of a meeting or workshop.

Method

The method follows the steps below:

• Review the risk assessment questions from prior worksheets or those that follow.
• Use the FAST risk analysis worksheets to capture your answers and compute a score.
• Use this score as a basis for the risk-skill matching described in the risk-skill map section.

Questions

SIZE FACTORS

The size factors measure the overall project size of effort, scope, and number of workshops.  This is an important factor in determining risk due to the complexity of planning and coordinating large projects and the required resources.

Project Life Cycle

All questions in this size section refer to the entire life span of the project your meetings support—initiation through implementation.

1. Work Hours: Total work hours (1,000s) for the project? This question refers to the estimated effort in thousands of work hours to develop the complete system.
2. Duration: What is the project’s estimated duration? This is the elapsed (calendar) time to complete the project.
3. Number Projects: Number of projects supporting the initiative or program? If a staged or prototype project, how many stages?
4. Dependency: Is there another project on which this project is likely or totally dependent? This question focuses on the “weakest link” theory.  It asks if the implementation has one key project that must go right above all others for the initiative to be successful.  If yes, does intuitive feel for the situation say the risk associated with that project is high?
5. Interfaces: How many existing “systems” will the new solution interface? Count the number of existing, distinctly different, systems that will provide or receive information to or from the new solution.
6. Workshop Quantity: Estimated number of workshops required for the project? Count the estimated number of different FAST workshops required to complete the project.
7. Different Types: How many different types of workshops are required? Count the number of different types of workshop agendas required.  If the project requires six workshops all using the same approach, count only 1 (one).  If the project requires multiple approaches and different types of workshops, count as appropriate.
8. Beginning Phase: In which phase are the workshops starting? Identify the beginning phase of the project.

Become Part of the Solution, Improve Your Facilitation Skills

The FAST curriculum on Professional Facilitation Skills details the responsibilities and dynamics mentioned above. Remember friends, nobody is smarter than everybody, so consult your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership training workshop offered around the world (see MG Rush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI, CDUs from IIBA, or CEUs).

Daring you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader.

Related articles

• Meetings Should Include a Communications Plan, Call it “Guardian of Change” (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• A “Plan” May Be Defined as “Who Does What (and When)” and Answers 10 Questions (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

Primary Types of Meetings and the Boundaries to Closely Manage

There are three primary types of business meetings: information sharing, instructional or directional task-related meetings, and facilitated or developed task-related meetings.

Information Sharing

Information Sharing

Information sharing meetings involve mostly one-way communication with information presented from the speaker to the group.  This type of meeting includes the symposium, instructional groups, staff meetings, and other presentations that attempt to communicate essential information to a group.  Interaction from participants to the meeting leader is normally limited to questions and comments.

Task-Related

Task-related meetings use the knowledge and experience of group members to accomplish a work task, such as problem-solving, decision-making, fact-finding, planning, etc.  These meetings are highly interactive, and involve two-way communication between all participants.  Task-related meetings also tend to fall apart more quickly with poor meeting management.  The two variations include:

1. Directed—the leader runs the meeting and controls the agenda.  These are the most common types of meetings.
2. Facilitated—an impartial facilitator runs the meeting and controls the agenda and technique.  These are the least common, but are growing in use, as they are the most effective for decision-making and building consensus.

The Model Meeting

To effectively manage a meeting, a meeting leader must pay attention to the dynamics of the group.  Having a model to work from helps the leader understand the group’s behavior to keep meeting dynamics in balance.  This enables the leader to sort problems from non-problems and respond appropriately.

Why a Model?

Looking back on the list of the 14 most frequently mentioned problems in meetings (see “Some of the Challenges and Costs Associated with Hosting Meetings”), we can attribute all of them to one primary cause; a lack of structure.  If this sounds like an oversimplification, it is, but only partially.  You may be asking yourself, “If structure has been the only problem with meetings, why are meetings in corporate America a waste of money?”  That is the effect of meeting dementia.  Take a closer look at the components of the model meeting.

Meeting Boundaries

Meeting boundaries provide the limits or scope, which separate the meeting and its components from the external environment.  Clear and unbroken boundaries are essential to good meeting management.  It is the meeting leader’s responsibility to keep the boundaries from being violated (broken) resulting in a breakdown in structure.  There are two types of meeting boundaries:

• Time boundaries
• Physical boundaries

Time Boundaries

Time boundaries govern the start time and stop time of the overall meeting, as well as the length of the meeting.  Meetings starting late seem to be an accepted norm.  All meetings should start at their scheduled time and not exceed the stop time.

Barring a major catastrophe, every meeting must start precisely on time.  Meetings that start late are in trouble right from the start.  This sends a message to the participant that degrades the perceived importance of the meeting.  The meeting is taken less seriously, and sets the stage for additional boundary violations.

If the meeting begins late because the leader is not ready, he or she loses credibility that is hard to recover.  Meetings that start late because the leader is waiting for latecomers are just as bad.  This communicates positive reinforcement to the latecomers, while negatively reinforcing those that came on time.

Running overtime must be avoided at all costs.  In cases where the discussion is crucial, continue only after obtaining consensus from the group.  Otherwise, summarize and reschedule another meeting to conclude the discussion.

How many meetings should have ended long ago?  Meeting length should never exceed 45 to 50 minutes unless it is a facilitated workshop.  By setting up your meetings for 45 or 50-minute increments, you are providing a courtesy to the participants, affording them time to refresh between meetings.

Meetings more than one hour long take too much energy and have an opportunity to drag.  Workshops, properly facilitated, can last for a number of days, but the reason for the extended length generates a deliverable.  Standard meetings taking longer than one hour should be broken into multiple sessions of an hour or less.

Physical Boundaries

Physical boundaries are those, which physically separate the meeting space from the rest of the outside world.  It is an accepted fact that the physical environment has an impact on the psychological environment.  Studies show that a formal atmosphere inhibits the mood for both groups and individuals.  The best meeting results occur when people feel comfortable and informality is balanced with focus on the work-task.  Psychologists refer to this as a state of “relaxed concentration”.  It is the meeting leader’s responsibility to see that proper physical boundaries are established and maintained.

Until next week, continue to fortify your skill set with tools and improvement suggestions available in many of our prior postings.

Become Part of the Solution, Improve Your Facilitation Skills

The FAST curriculum on Professional Facilitation Skills details the responsibilities and dynamics mentioned above. Remember friends, nobody is smarter than everybody, so consult your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership training workshop offered around the world (see MG Rush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI, CDUs from IIBA, or CEUs)

Related articles

• Mission or Vision – What is the Difference? (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Facilitating Crucial Conversations (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Facilitate Business Process Improvement: A Proven Approach Using Teams (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Design Culture: 16 Patterns to Build Adaptive Learning Organizations (emergentbydesign.com)
• A Meeting Participants’ Credo (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

 

Some of the Challenges and Costs Associated with Hosting Meetings

 

Meetings are frequently a fix for poor leadership. Most would rather go to a movie than sit in a two-hour meeting. Even poor movies have a beginning, middle, and end.

Meetings are very expensive. Today’s business world is asymmetric, and holding meetings to share information is a poor use of precious resources. Information updates are better conducted through dashboard devices than staff meetings.

Meeting Challenges

The best reason to pull people together is to build something that we cannot do apart, to arrive at consensus, to decide on something. For most session leaders (aka facilitators), weekly meetings are best replaced by full day(s) workshops. We focus on improving facilitation because we know the use of facilitators greatly improves meetings.

Role of Meetings

We live in a meeting society. Along with billions of people, our world also contains more than 200 nation-states, 4 million local communities, 20 million economic organizations, 200 million extended families, and hundreds of millions of other formal and informal groups. In order for groups to exist, individuals that make up these groups must meet and interact.

Current Trends

The increased growth in the number and length of meetings is due to the accelerated rate of change that now rules today’s business environment. The rapid and constant change in technology, particularly information technology and business process management, has dramatically increased the volatility of the global market place. As technology takes over more routine functions, and allows faster access to data, managerial skills shift, calling for increased communications clarity and small group skills.

Flatter Structures

Another trend emerging as a result of an accelerated environment is the growth of more efficient and flatter organization structures. These organizations have fewer management layers and, therefore fewer levels of decision-making. Flatter structures result in more group decision-making by specialists from disparate areas within the organization. Consequently, the ability to effectively communicate ideas in meetings has taken on increased importance.

Participative 
Management

A byproduct from replacing hierarchy with holarchy is an increasing emphasis on participative employee ownership. This movement is based on the premise that:

• The quality of decisions are improved if all employee expertise is considered, and
• The act of employee participation leads to better acceptance of the decisions.

50 Percent Productive

Studies have estimated that meetings are at most 50 percent productive. Thus the typical manager wastes approximately 240 hours per year (about 30 days) at a cost to the average Fortune 500 Company of greater than one billion USD per year. By using proper meeting management, a company could recover 25 to 35 percent of these costs, or hundreds of millions per year.

Intangible Costs

The intangible costs associated with poor meeting management are overlooked at all levels of management. Meetings serve as opportunities for senior management to appraise and search out potential leaders within an organization. As lower level managers take on more responsibilities, they spend more of their time in meetings with executives at higher levels. Their success as executives is tied to their ability to make the most out of meetings.

Psychological Costs

Participating in a poorly run meeting is frustrating, resulting in apathy, resentment, and a lack of commitment toward the meeting’s outcome. This attitude carries over to the workplace, in many cases, subverting good ideas that come from the meetings.

Meeting Dementia

Poorly run meetings have been around so long and are so prevalent that people and organizations have developed what can be called “meeting dementia.” This is the view that poorly run and unproductive meetings are the norm, and that’s just the way it is. This viewpoint seems to have been inherited by observing others who have lead poorly run meetings, who in turn learned from others making the same mistakes, and so on.

The Problems

The major problems with meetings, surprisingly, don’t have to do with personalities or the inability of group members to get along with one another. The problems are typically task-related—ie, people do not know the mechanics of HOW TO lead effective meetings.   The following list highlights 14 of the most frequently mentioned problems by over 1,000 managers:

1. Getting off subject
2. No goals or agenda
3. Too long
4. Poor preparation
5. Inconclusive
6. Disorganized
7. Ineffective leader/ lack of control
8. Irrelevant information discussed
9. Time wasted
10. Started late
11. Ineffective for making decisions
12. Interruptions (inside and out)
13. Dominators
14. Rambling discussion

Become Part of the Solution, Improve Your Facilitation Skills

The FAST curriculum on Professional Facilitation Skills details the responsibilities and dynamics mentioned above. Remember friends, nobody is smarter than everybody, so consult your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership training workshop offered around the world (see MG Rush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI, CDUs from IIBA, or CEUs)

Related articles

• How to Facilitate Business Process Improvement: A Proven Approach Using Teams (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• A Meeting Participants’ Credo (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Before the Meeting Adjourns, Tell Me What You’ll Do Next (nytimes.com)
• 3 Ways to Keep Meetings Short (Every Time) (inc.com)

 

4 Considerations Providing & Participating in Effective Training

Training activities enhance knowledge base and also offer employees a reason not to leave an organization. Professional development remains a highly effective retention method.

Unfortunately, when organizations make budget cuts, training and education frequently suffer first. While intended to help control costs, less knowledgeable employees will not be able to maintain competitive advantage, and innovation suffers as well. Wise budgeting increases employee knowledge and retention, even when budgets are tight. Consider the following:

1. Seek knowledge not degrees. An MBA provides general management knowledge, but not the specific knowledge required for immediate implementation. Topic focused training such as HOW TO LEAD BETTER MEETINGS, provides a quicker return on investment, and can be applied within days of completing the curriculum.
2. Live classes may be better. Despite the tendency toward e learning, there is not substitute for quality interaction with expert instructors. If you hire from outside, you can call upon training as you need it, and not be required to support full-time staff around each and every business topic.
   

   Effective Training

3. Provide feedback. Mentoring is known to have tremendous impact within organizations so ensure that employees get the feedback they need to take the training they need most. Strive for impact, powerful and immediate. Each and every person has opportunities to leverage strengths and shore-up weaknesses. They don’t always prioritize them correctly however. Depend on a mentor or an outsider  (eg, coach) who can provide honest, neutral feedback.
4. Make it easy. If it is worth doing, it is worth doing right. Consider hosting private classes that pull together teams and help develop esprit de corps (ie, teamwork) in addition to individual learning. Alternatively, invest in a fast-track employees future and permit them to travel for the training, reducing the headaches of office demands while in training.

Effective training provides physical, emotional, and intellectual relief. When budgets are tight and work demands per employee increase, do not forget the importance of your people, their needs, and the opportunity for win-win by providing effective training.

Facilitation Skills

The FAST curriculum on Professional Facilitation Skills details the responsibilities and dynamics mentioned above. Remember friends, nobody is smarter than everybody, so consult your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership training workshop offered around the world (see MG Rush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI, CDUs from IIBA, or CEUs)

Related articles

• Mission or Vision – What is the Difference? (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Hong Kong Training and Development 2009 (thinkingbookworm.typepad.com)
• Bad Management (americanarmadillo.wordpress.com)
• You’re Training But Are They Retaining? (mkcallconsult.wordpress.com)

How to Interview Meeting Participants

FAST alumni know that the single most important ingredient to meeting and workshop success is thorough preparation. There is no “silver bullet” to save a session leader who is ill prepared. The most important activity while preparing for a meeting is to know where you are going—ie, ‘What is the deliverable?’ The next most important activity is interviewing the participants to begin managing their expectations and need to arrive ready to contribute and be productive.

Interview Method

Interview participants to understand as much as possible about them, the people they work with, and their business. Speak with all the participants, preferably one-on-one for about 30 minutes each. Speak with each face-to-face, or at least by way of a teleconference.

Interview Sequence

Interviewing Meeting Participants

First meet the executive sponsor, the business partners, the project team, and then the participants. Keep your interviews around twenty to thirty minutes each. Conduct the interviews privately and assure participants that their responses will be kept CONFIDENTIAL.

Interview Objectives  

Interview the participants to advance understanding:

• To become familiar with their job, their business, and their expectations
• To confirm who should, or should not, attend and why
• To help them show up better prepared to contribute
• To identify potential issues, hidden agendas, and other obstacles
• To identify scheduling conflicts and other concerns
• To transfer ownership of the meeting purpose, scope, and deliverables

 Interviewing Questions

The following are well-sequenced questions that you should ask. Begin each interview explaining your role and the purpose of the interview. Ask for permission to take notes. Use open-ended questions, sit back, and listen to the person—discover their value and value add to the initiative you are supporting.

• “What do you expect from the session?”
• “What will make the workshop a complete failure?”
• “What should the output look like?”
• “What problems do you foresee?”
• “Who should attend the workshop? Who should not? Why?”
• “What is going to be my biggest obstacle?”
• “How does the deliverable and agenda make sense to you?”
• “What should I have asked that I didn’t ask?”

Interviewing Focus

The precision and sequence of the questions is important. They are all open-ended. They help manage “right-to-left” thinking; ie, ‘expect’ and ‘output.’ Next they focus on the hidden politics; ie, ‘failure,’ ‘problems,’ and ‘obstacles.’ They end with a strong, closing question that emphasizes the humility of the roles of facilitator.

Facilitation Skills

The FAST curriculum on Professional Facilitation Skills details the responsibilities and dynamics mentioned above. Remember friends, nobody is smarter than everybody, so consult your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership training workshop offered around the world (see MG Rush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI, CDUs from IIBA, or CEUs).

Related articles

• Meeting Participation Tips (Part 2 of 3 – The Middle) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Meeting Participation Tips (Part 3 of 3 – The Wrap) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

3 Quick Tips to Be More Interactive and Facilitative as a Presenter

Research by the National Speakers’ Association shows that becoming facilitative is one of the most important changes a speaker could make to be more effective. By that they meant the use of interaction, discussion, and method for engaging participants’ ideas. When you are a speaker, please consider the following suggestions, listed in the chronology you would expect during a normal presentation:

1. Take extra time to precisely articulate your purpose, scope, and objectives.
   • Do not rely on an overly broad and meaningless purpose statement such as to “educate” or “inform”. With instant, on-line access across the world, there are far more effective ways to learn most material than to attend a live presentation. Presentations are normally intended to shape and guide behavior. Which behaviors and what decisions that need to be made will your material impact?
   • Stipulate the scope of your discussion to help manage time and keep your audience focused. What should be included and more importantly, NOT included in your session?
   • Consider your statement of objectives as discrete items that you could package and hand off to somebody. If I was unable to attend your presentation but you could hand me the benefits, what are they?
2. Consider three discrete audiences perspectives for all commercial, industrial, and government topics. Each perspective requires its own scorecard or method of analyzing and measuring input received during a presentation. Typically you will find a sponsor, a decision-maker, and an operator:
   

   Organizational Decision-Making

   • Executive sponsors. Individuals who authorize solutions. They really do not want to attend more presentation or view more data, they simply want results. For example, in a hospital setting, this might be the CIO (chief information officer).
   • Agents responsible for the identification of solutions and getting the results sought by the executive sponsors. These people may decide alone or as a steering team. They frequently approve the broad solution, the investments required, and the commitment that will be provided. In a hospital setting this might be the directors of finance and radiology.
   • Individuals who will operate the new solution (eg, a new bio-scanner) and may have a voice in the brand or model selection. In a hospital setting this might be a radiologist or technician, responsible for getting patients in and out as quickly as possible.
3. During or after your presentation when questions are asked, be more facilitative by repeating the question or comment loud enough so that everyone can hear it.

As part of the FAST technique, we would also recommend using a content-management tool to build consensual understanding around your presentation, but that is a different blog at a different time.

Facilitation Skills

The FAST curriculum on Professional Facilitation Skills details the responsibilities and dynamics mentioned above. Remember friends, nobody is smarter than everybody, so consult your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership training workshop offered around the world (see MG Rush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI, CDUs from IIBA, or CEUs).

Related articles

• How to Manage Breakout Sessions (or, 3 Minute Sub Team Productivity WOW) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Facilitate Business Process Improvement: A Proven Approach Using Teams (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Meeting Participation Tips (Part 3 of 3 – The Wrap) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

A Meeting Participants’ Credo

If there was a silver bullet for making facilitators more effective, it would be to get their meeting participants better prepared and contributory. To that extent, we offer you the following to submit to your meeting participants. This credo, or a statement of the beliefs or aims that ought guide participants’ actions, has been modified from “The Ethics of the Management Profession” Harvard Business Review 2008 and reprinted by some as the Hippocratic Oath for Meetings by numerous business organizations, domestically and around the world.

As a participant I serve as society’s fiduciary for_______,  an organization that brings people and resources together to create valued products and services.  My purpose is to serve the public’s interest by enhancing the value my organization creates for society. Sustainable valueis created when the organization produces economic, social, and environmental output that is measurably greater than the opportunity cost of all it consumes. In fulfilling my role .  .  .

Ethically Responsible

• I recognize that any enterprise is at the nexus of many different constituencies, whose interests can sometimes diverge. While balancing and reconciling various interests, I  seek a course that enhances the value my organization can create for society over the long term. This may not always mean growing or preserving the organization and may include such painful actions as its restructuring, discontinuation, or sales, if these actions preserve or increase value.
• I pledge that considerations of personal benefit will never supersede the interests of the organization I am supporting. The pursuit of self-interest is the vital engine of a capitalist economy, but unbridled greed can be just as harmful. Therefore, I will guard against decisions and behavior that advances my own narrow ambitions but harm the organization I represent and the societies it serves.
• I promise to understand and uphold, both in letter and in spirit, the laws and contracts governing my own conduct, that of my organization, and that of the societies in which it operates. My personal behavior will be an example of integrity, consistent with the values I publicly espouse. I will be equally vigilant in ensuring the integrity of others around me and bring to attention the actions of others that represent violations of this shared professional code.
• I vow to represent my organization’s performance accurately and transparently to relevant parties, ensuring that investors, consumers, and the public at large can make well-informed decisions. I aim to help people understand how decisions that affect them are made, so that choices do not appear arbitrary or biased.
• I will not permit considerations of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, party politics, or social status to influence my choices. I will endeavor to protect the interests of those who may not have power, but whose well-being is dependent on my decisions.
• I will participate diligently, mindfully, and conscientiously applying judgment based on the best knowledge available. I will consult colleagues and others who can help inform my judgment and will continually invest in staying abreast of the evolving knowledge in the field, always remaining open to innovation. I will do my utmost to develop myself and the next generation of participants so that our organization continues to grow and contribute to the well-being of society.
• I recognize that my stature and privileges as a professional stem from the honor and trust that the profession as a whole enjoys, and I accept my responsibility for embodying, protecting, and developing the standards of our profession, so as to enhance that respect and honor.

Facilitation Skills

The FAST curriculum on Professional Facilitation Skills details the responsibilities and dynamics mentioned above. Remember friends, nobody is smarter than everybody, so consult your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership training workshop offered around the world (see MG Rush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI, CDUs from IIBA, or CEUs).

Related articles

• Meeting Participation Tips (Part 2 of 3 – The Middle) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Meeting Participation Tips (Part 3 of 3 – The Wrap) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• From Chomsky, Shiva, Pilger and more: An Open Message to All Who Seek A New and Better World (dandelionsalad.wordpress.com)

Some Great Project Questions

Borrowed from a project approach called A3, here are sequentially some excellent project questions that serve as a litmus test for determining the overall health of a project.  The answers, or lack thereof, serve as a leading indicator for subsequent meeting focus and areas of exploration for the facilitator.

• What is the problem or issue?
• Who owns the problem?
• What are the root causes of the problem?
• What are some possible countermeasures?
• How will you decide which countermeasures to propose?
• How will you get agreement from everyone concerned?
• What is your implementation plan—who, what, when, where, and how?
• How will you know if your countermeasures work?
• What follow-up issues can you anticipate?
• What problems may occur during implementation?
• How will you capture and share the learning?
• Who is responsible for this issue?
• Who owns the process for addressing the problem (or realizing the opportunity or managing the project)?
• What is the business context?
• How did you decide to tackle this problem?
• What do you actually know and how do you know it?
• Tow hat extent have you gathered and verified facts-not just data and anecdotes-to clearly understand the current state?
• To what extent have you engaged other people?
• What is the problem?
• Can you clearly and succinctly define the “presenting problem”—the actual business issue that is being felt?
• Have you identified the real problem?
• Can you show the gap between the target and the current condition?
• Did you clarify the optimal business objectives?
• Did you uncover the substantive (ie, most meaningful) information to support the analysis?
• Did you isolate the root cause(s) of the main components of the gap?
• Did you capture this material in the most clear and concise manner; ie, one that clarifies true problems, invites analytic questions, and suggests direct countermeasures?

Facilitation Skills

The FAST curriculum on Professional Facilitation Skills details the responsibilities and dynamics mentioned above. Remember friends, nobody is smarter than everybody, so consult your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership training workshop offered around the world (see MG Rush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI, CDUs from IIBA, or CEUs).

Related articles

• How to Facilitate Virtual Meetings: Teleconference and VideoPresence (Part 3 of 3 – Conclusion) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Facilitate a Consensual Sphere of Concern, Influence, and Control Using the Bookend Method (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Future Facilitative Leadership Factors (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Meeting Participation Tips (Part 2 of 3 – The Middle) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Crashing Through Toward Improved Facilitation (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Meeting Participation Tips (Part 3 of 3 – The Wrap) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Facilitate Virtual Meetings: Teleconference and VideoPresence (Part 2 of 3 – During/ Real Time) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Help Resolve Business Arguments (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Examples of 5 Whys Root Cause Analysis (smartchurchmanagement.com)
• 10 Tips for Making Good Decisions (nathanology.us)
• How to Manage Breakout Sessions (or, 3 Minute Sub Team Productivity WOW) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Litmus Test (q-ontech.blogspot.com)
• Dig Deeper (theleanblog.wordpress.com)

Meeting Participation Tips (Part 1 of 3—The Beginning)

Great meetings include certain, repeatable characteristics.  A high level of participation frequently indicates the opportunity for a great meeting.  What encourages participation?

We share select characteristics with you through the sequence they would occur in a well-conducted meeting; namely the beginning, the middle, and the end.  The following is not meant to be exhaustive, as supporting detail is found in other blogs.  However, we find the following to rank among the most important items for inciting high levels of meeting participation and collaboration.

 Beginning (aka Preparation) Phase

Meeting results and ownership need to be transferred to the participants from the very beginning.  Optimally, meting participants should review the purpose, scope, and objectives (ie, deliverables) before the meeting begins.  They need to verify that they understand and find them acceptable, or have an opportunity to provide their input to changes something before the meeting begins.  They should also review the method and tools that will be used to ensure that they find the approach sound.  Remember, they will be held responsible for the outcome.

Meeting Participation (Preparation)

A glossary or lexicon should be included in the pre-read or handout so that individuals can refer back to the operational definitions of terms as challenges arise.  People within groups frequently find themselves in violent agreement with each other, and it’s imperative that all the participants agree on what is meant by the terms being used in the purpose, scope, and objectives.  Typically, the glossary should be maintained by the project team, project management office, program office, or strategic center of excellence.  Teams do not normally have time to argue about the difference between a vendor and a contractor or a bill and an invoice.   Unless the definitions are part of the deliverable, they should be determined in advance.

When meetings or workshops are held to support projects, it’s invaluable for participants to know and understand the purpose and objectives of the project, the reason the project was approved (ie, program goals), and the goals and objectives of the mandating organization (ie, the strategic plan of the business unit and/ or enterprise).  Ultimately, all arguments should be resolved by which position best supports reaching the enterprise objectives. Optimally, the meeting room should have large, visible copies of enterprise mission, values, and vision.  Handout material should include the more detailed goals (ie, fuzzy and directional) objectives (ie, specific and SMART).

Biographic sketches of other meeting members can inspire empathy and understanding. With virtual meetings, be certain to include photographs that show the face behind the voice.  If you provide supplemental reading material, strive to customize a cover letter for each participant highlighting the pages or sections upon which they should focus, rather than suggesting they give their entire and equal attention to everything in the handout. Prompt each subject matter expert in advance with the questions that will be raised during the meeting most pertinent to them or their role.  Ask them to focus on those questions since you will turn to them for the first response when the question is raised.

Ultimately the session leader (aka facilitator) is responsible for tying together the relevancy of the issues mentioned above, known as managing the context.  The session leader needs to emphasize the importance of the meeting output to the organization, hopefully expressed in terms of how many financial assets or labor hours (eg, FTE) are at risk if the meting fails.

If the session leader and the participants show up prepared, chances of success are highly amplified. The term ‘facilitate’ means to ‘make easy’ and if you embrace the suggestions above and in the next two blogs, you will see meeting participation substantially increase.  More importantly, you will have properly begun transfer of ownership and responsibility from the solo session leader to the group or team, as it should be.

 Facilitation Skills

The FAST curriculum on Professional Facilitation Skills details the responsibilities and dynamics mentioned above. Remember friends, nobody is smarter than everybody, so consult your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership training workshop offered around the world (see MG Rush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI, CDUs from IIBA, or CEUs).

Related articles

• The Role of Session Leader (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Facilitate Virtual Meetings: Teleconference and VideoPresence (Part 2 of 3 – During/ Real Time) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Facilitate a Consensual Sphere of Concern, Influence, and Control Using the Bookend Method (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Get a Promising Meeting to Fail (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• SMART Versus DUMB Criteria (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How To Actively Listen (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Analyze Brainstorming Input (continued) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Facilitate Requirements Gathering (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

How to Help Resolve Business Arguments

Here is a powerful, three-step method to help you, help others, resolve business arguments. We will give you the three steps, and then discuss them further.

1. Active listening
2. Alignment
3. Escalation

1. Active listening

So much material, here at this blog site and elsewhere, focuses on the skill and benefits of active listening, that we not delve into too much detail. As session leader (aka facilitator) you may find your participants at times, in violent agreement with each other. Occasionally you have subject matter experts (aka participants or SME) who do not listen to themselves and may be uncertain as to what they said. Frequently, since people can only concentrate six to eight minutes at a time, someone “wakes up” without hearing fully what was said.

With all the examples above, plus the more obvious disagreements, active listening is critical because the participants need a neutral and thorough reflection of what was said. With active listening, you make contact, absorb, provide reflection, and then confirm if your reflection is accurate.  Many issues get resolved when the arguments are properly shaped in the hands of a neutral party, the facilitator.  But what do you do when active listing fails?

2. Alignment

A Business or Organizational Holarchy

Alignment is a wonderful consulting term. It includes three syllables and remains abstract enough that it is never clear exactly how to do it. Frankly, it is easy, once you understand the holarchy.

We invest much more time elsewhere discussing the intricacies of the table illustrated below, so for now let us focus simply on alignment. Specifically, we seek to ask the participants to align each of the arguments with the objectives, and ask in sequence:

• Which argument best supports the project objectives, and why?
• Which argument best supports the program objectives, and why?
• Which argument best supports the business unit (ie, organizational) objectives, and why?
• Which argument best supports the enterprise objectives, and why?

As you can tell, we are working upwards in the objectives column. With each question, some portion of arguments will be resolved, and yet others will remain unresolved. Ultimately, the most important question is the last one, asking which argument best supports the enterprise objectives, and why. Yet some people and issues are very stubborn, and active listening and alignment will not necessarily resolve all arguments. Then what?

3. Escalation

We need to document the rationales from the questions above.  Ensure that each why is captured, understood, and illustrated with examples form the business. Take this document, in printed form (not hanging out in the aether as a verbal argument) back to the4 executive sponsor, or decision executive, or steering team, or decision review boards, or whomever you call it and ask them for their help.

Most sponsors will ask the project managers, analysts, and other team members at some time or another “Do you need my help for anything?” What they are asking you is NOT if you want them to do your job for you. They are asking, have you reached an impasses that you are unable to reconcile.  Now is the time for escalation.  This is the type of help they are asking about.

Guest what they do to arrive at an answer?  They use the holarchial questions mentioned above, typically with greater insight and understanding about the connectivity of various projects, than we might have in our own little box.  They look at the arguments and ask to what extent does each support the project objectives (ie, reason for the meeting), the program objectives (ie, reason for the project), the business unit objectives (ie, reason for the program or initiative), and the enterprise objectives (ie, reason for the business units).  The holarchy is indispensable for resolving arguments, and to help facilitators prevent scope creep during their meetings.

Facilitation Skills

The FAST curriculum on Professional Facilitation Skills details the responsibilities and dynamics mentioned above. Remember friends, nobody is smarter than everybody, so consult your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership training workshop offered around the world (see MG Rush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI, CDUs from IIBA, or CEUs).

Related articles

• SMART Versus DUMB Criteria (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Facilitate Virtual Meetings: Teleconference and VideoPresence (Part 3 of 3 – Conclusion) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How To Actively Listen (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Facilitate Virtual Meetings: Teleconference and VideoPresence (Part 2 of 3 – During/ Real Time) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Future Facilitative Leadership Factors (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Facilitate a Consensual Sphere of Concern, Influence, and Control Using the Bookend Method (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• The Role of Session Leader (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• The Project Manager vs. the Business Analyst (project-pro.us)
• How to Facilitate Virtual Meetings: Teleconference and VideoPresence (Part 1 of 3 – Preparation) (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)