9 Facilitation Skills People Wish I Learned Sooner.
This post is dedicated to my first teams who endured my learning curve. You know who you are, and your feedback has been invaluable. Thank you.
Over the last year I’ve hosted a lot of meetings and so many of them have been terrible. And in my role as a scrum master (read: software project manager), I have 4-5 regular kinds of meetings to facilitate weekly, all with a different purpose and designed outcome. Keeping these from going stale requires intensive prep and energy, but with better practices put in place the meeting game has changed.
Here are the practices I’ve taken up that have led to less horrible meetings.
Before the call
Determine if the meeting is necessary
Purpose / Intended Results
Agenda
Artifact - what are people going to look at / helpful links
Requested prep - tell people how best they can prep for the call
I stole “Purpose and Intended Results” from a co-worker who stole it from his wife. It’s an amazing exercise to ask before the meeting because if I can’t figure out very clearly why we need to meet, then we don’t need to. Simple as that.
I’m big on sending an agenda and supporting docs before a call because sometimes my invite list has holes in it. How often do you get into a call and you find out you don’t have the right people in the room? “Oh, if we’re talking about that today we need a different team because they handle that, not us.”
By sending everything for the call in advance, you’ve also done a lot of your prep work, and the next point becomes easier as well.
Get clear on your audience
Are there people on your invite list who do not need to be there
Who is missing from your invite list
Have conversations to find out!
How many times do you get an invite for a vague call, and you’re not sure if you need to be there or not so you attend anyway, only to realize about 10 minutes through that you didn’t need to be there after all? There’s a boundaries and empowerment discussion that could be inserted here, but let’s table that for a later date. In short, clarity is kindness!
Only after you define a meeting, set the agenda, and send the supporting documents can your invite list be clear.
If all of the invitations you received had clear expectations you may be empowered to decline if the meeting contents are not something you need to be there for.
During the call
State the purpose and intended results — whatever you are trying to achieve in the call
My team calls this my opening monologue. It’s worth taking the minute or two up front to get everyone aligned on the mission of the call
Show something on your screen
If it’s important enough that we’re meeting about it, show me something so I know we’re on the same page. Even if you’re in a brainstorming call, take notes in a visible place, or bring up visuals as you facilitate.
Recap what has been said every 20-ish minutes
The brain can only house so much new information before it has to make decisions on where to store the information it just took in (short term storage? long term storage? somewhere seemingly lost until it comes back to you in a dream a decade later?).
Giving your audience a recap every 20 minutes or so can keep everyone aligned. It’s also kind to take breaks! I often say “Okay, it’s been 20 minutes since our last stretch break. Wherever you are in the world, stand up, stretch, hydrate…”
Establish ownership of action items
Unassigned tasks do not get done. Ask for a volunteer to take an action item. If folks aren’t talkative (nobody wants more work), get chaotic and use wheelofnames.com.
Timebox!
Stay on track by reminding your audience of how much time has passed and what still needs to get done. It helps if you create a timed agenda for yourself as your guide.
Reinforce the communication pipeline
Where is the proper forum to use going forward? Name of chat, channel, etc. Where can people find a recap? Where can people ask questions or follow through on their action items?
After the Call
Retrospect - get feedback from your folks on how it can be improved for next time.
Sending a quick message to some of the individuals on the call can set a great precedence for collecting feedback. Some prompts I use: Was this useful for you? Was this what you were expecting? Is there something that could have made it better?
Publish notes in a tool that is dynamic and collaborative
Hint - consider the medium. If you work in a FaSt PaCeD eNvIrOnMeNt, by the time you’ve sent an email the status on something may have already changed. For information that is dynamic, consider a collaborative tool like a google doc or wiki page that can be updated by many people asynchronously.
