Biz Tips Podcast

Always look for ways to improve your facilitation skills. After each meeting review what worked well and what could be improved upon. Good facilitators will reserve the end of a meeting to get feedback from the group. Provide multiple ways to give feedback, not everyone is comfortable assessing your performance while you’re in the room. It is important that you do not take feedback personally, learn from it. Becoming a better facilitator helps meetings be more productive and worth the time spent.

Sometimes meetings end leaving participants unaware of what they're supposed to do next. Poorly defined actions can cause two people to do the same task while another task sits untouched. Ensure everyone has no misunderstandings about what needs to be done. A good facilitator should get agreement on every decision, helping the group develop actionable items associated with every decision, and assign a person responsible for the items. The meeting minutes should reflect these assignments. This allows everyone to know what he or she must do when the meeting is over.

Meetings aren’t meant to be all work and no play. Make the environment one in which people are comfortable. Ensure the participants have fun. Allow joking, small talk, and activities, if it makes the group more productive. When no one has focused on the issue at hand for a couple of minutes, it’s time to stop the chatting and refocus.

Going into a meeting with the essentials of what the group wants to discuss, agree on, and accomplish increases the chances that participants will make actionable decisions within a set time frame. Without an agenda, people will bring up loosely related subjects that aren't critical to achieving the meeting goals therefore distract from the main issue. Great ideas and beneficial digressions will occur with an agenda and skilled facilitation.