Facilitating a professional meeting is not always an easy task. Between participants’ lack of concentration, the monotony of many meetings, and digressions that prevent objectives from being met, it is not easy to leave the room having accomplished what was planned. To help you make your meetings more dynamic and achieve your objectives within the allotted time, BURO Club presents its 4 techniques for facilitating a meeting.
1. Thoroughly Prepare for the Meeting
The first step towards a dynamic meeting is thorough preparation. Firstly, preparing the meeting allows participants to gain insight into the discussions, the subject matter, and even to prepare their contributions accordingly. Preparation also ensures that you are not caught off guard on the day of the meeting and know how to guide collaborators towards finding an innovative solution to the problem at hand.
First, prepare an agenda. You may also allocate an approximate time to each agenda item. If you plan a PowerPoint presentation, ensure it is not too lengthy and limit the text: a visual aid is ideal for illustrating a point or presenting a graph, but it is unproductive for all your collaborators to read a PowerPoint for an hour without contributing new ideas.
2. Review the Current Situation
At the very beginning of the meeting, before addressing the meeting’s objectives, review the current situation with your teams. If your meeting aims to find a solution to a problem, you could, for instance, ask each participant to explain how this issue impacts their work.
You can also ask each participant to express their perception of the gap between the current situation and the objective to be achieved (whether it pertains to a single meeting or several months of work). To facilitate this, display the objective on a wall by writing it on a whiteboard or using a sticky note. Then, ask each participant to indicate their position relative to this objective by placing another sticky note. This introductory exercise is excellent for encouraging everyone to articulate their needs as well as their reservations.
Another method to review the situation at the outset of the meeting is to reread the agenda and seek approval from all attendees. Should someone observe that a significant topic risks not being addressed, they can request its inclusion in the agenda.
3. Encourage Constructive Exchanges
As the meeting facilitator, you must ensure shared and balanced participation that fosters constructive exchanges. Ensure that every individual has the opportunity to share their impressions in a supportive environment. Do not hesitate to encourage more reserved participants to speak and redirect the discussion to remain focused on the agenda items.
Additionally, consider stimulating the group when discussions lose momentum. For instance, rephrase or ask someone to rephrase what has been stated. Rephrasing helps to reinvigorate the conversation, allowing new ideas to emerge.
You can also regularly reiterate the objectives and the intended direction of the meeting. Finally, ensure you employ confident non-verbal communication and express yourself clearly and intelligibly to ensure everyone feels appropriately included.
4. Facilitate with Games and Activities
Activities and games are an excellent means to allow each participant to express their creativity during a meeting. However, you must consider your audience: while some appreciate games and interactive elements in meetings, this is not universally true. If a segment of your audience does not respond well to the tone of your meeting, they may not be able to contribute quality work.
To address a specific request, you could, for example, implement brainwriting: you pose a question and ask each participant to respond in writing on a sheet of paper. Subsequently, discussions are based on what each individual has written. This method allows everyone to think freely before being influenced by the rest of the group, thereby preserving individual creativity and ideas before a decisive direction is taken.
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