Business Management ABCs

Step 1 of 3 To Facilitating a Successful Meeting of Any Kind – 3 Part Series

The meetings over and half of the things you wanted to get accomplished are still on the agenda! This happens all to often, its unproductive, and causes people to not want to come to meetings.

So if there is no clear person “running” the meeting, then you should look to take charge just so that something gets done, even if it’s your personal agenda, don’t recommend doing it for that reason.

Step 1 – Start with the end in mind. This sounds easy enough, the challenge is that many of the people at the meeting have not taken the time to really consider what they want their “outcome” to be from the time spent. What you will find is that when you ask that question, you will hear people say.. “that’s a good question, what do we want”… Now you will begin to hear some solid thoughts come from this process.

Here is the key to your being a good facilitator. Do your best at this point not to put your ’2 cents’ into the mix. As the facilitator you are there to manage the time and the activities to ensure that everyone at the meeting is getting something out of it. You do need some place to keep the topics that are thrown out, either a white board, or note pad even a sheet of paper. These topics are important so that you can use them to refer to during the course of the meeting.

So there are a few different “ending points” that take place during the course of a meeting depending on the length. If it’s an all day meeting, then you would start off with: 1. What do we want to happen by the end of the day? 2. What do we want to happen by Lunch Break? 3. If we don’t hit all the topics will we schedule another meeting.

Now the reason for the last one is because there are times that people fail to cover a particular topic in the depth necessary, because they really want to get through all the different topics on the board, to say they completed the agenda.

The key to being a good facilitator is to keep everyone on the topics they said were important. Part 2 and Part 3 will take you into the process and the language you can use so that you can be in charge, but not controlling. To many people feel that if you are running the meeting that you are in charge of it… this creates tension when that person tries to take control of the meeting, people feel they are just wanting to get through their personal agenda.

So keep the meeting flowing, be aware of all that is happening and manage expectations, you will soon find that there are people that will look to you, that will need you at their meetings to get them the best results possible. Enjoy and have fun.

Your friend and Student, Sean G Murphy

Step 1 – Start with the end in mind

Step 2 – Process Check to keep them on “priority”

Step 3 – Dealing with issues that are important but not Priority

http://www.seangmurphy.com
Sean G Murphy has over 20 years experience in sales and training. As a Professional Public Speaker, on topics of motivation, inspiration, accountability. He has been translated into 18 languages, and spoken live on stage in front of audiences in 13 countries.
Sean’s main focus is to be a Better Dad and Husband, and to help others who want to have more of what they want and less of what they do not.