To be able to facilitate better is one of this decade's critical skills for leadership

These elegant, collaborative and engaging capabilities aren't just for trainers, presenters or coaches.

Executives, business analysts, project managers, middle level team and people leaders and those new to managing and leading experience the benefits of being able to:
🌕engage with a group or team,
🌕draw information from that group, and then
🌕help them collaborate to achieve an agreed outcome.


Leaders can do so much better to create the right environment and set up the processes that will help that team work together and collaborate.

But make no mistake, facilitation is not ‘soft’ work. 

Better Facilitation will help you balance:
- Achieving outcomes
- Boosting engagement
- Driving productivity
- Encouraging contribution.

Make meetings and workshops better, engagement and collaboration better ... and results and impacts better.

That workshop will need some design

Many of us are leading more workshops and meetings than ever before.

We’re bringing people together, helping them with learning, planning, collaborating, discussing and decision making.

So how do you ensure the workshops you lead are interesting, engaging ... AND effective?

By design.

Successful workshops and meetings come via better design.

And whether we’re leading online or face-to-face sessions, they all require some design ... before the day.

Careful though, because we can also go overboard and over-engineer! There’s a sweet spot where we have designed the most valuable elements and then we can let the rest roll.

Focus on these 4 things in design :

1. Engagement
2. Activities
3. Participation
4. Outcomes.

The road to nowhere

There you are about to start a new project or task. You're ready to go. You're ready to start ... but do you know when or where you will stop? Might you end up working on this task, idea or project and it has no known end?

How do you know where the end is?

I've learned much working with software developers these past 10 years; they work out the 'definition of done' before they even get started. How smart is that! To know when you'll be 'done' before you even get going!

The alternative is that crazy space where you start but you don't know what the finish looks like. Well you do, but it's a conjuring, your imagination at work, creating an image in your mind.

We're clever humans but bringing a mental image into reality is a tricky thing to do. This is why the pursuit of perfect is such a waste. The image keeps changing and we don't know when to stop.

Before you get started, work out where you will stop. Marathon runners do it; airlines, pilots and planes do it; taxis, trains and Ubers do it; chefs with recipes do it. What are you or the team working on right now that has no defined stop point? You're on a road to nowhere.

Pause, define the stop point and then re-start.

A P.S. to the Standup

Good news! The team I talked about in my recent post The best meeting : 10 minutes, no water bottles, no chairs, no tables, has now had four stand up meetings... FOUR.... and they're hooked!

Yes there was uncertainty. There was doubt. There was disbelief.

But there was also focus, clarity and progress.

They laughed. They even applauded spontaneously at the end of the first meeting.

And then off they went and started... doing! Hooray.

I'm still standing by them as they stand up, mainly to guide the leader with some facilitation skills. Of course, that leader already has some great facilitation skills, but you know what it's like when you're working with PEOPLE! :-)

We're all human and so the human leader just needs to deliver some more human to the humans in the stand up.

So a little coaching, guidance and debriefing for the leader on the fine art of 'handling the sh*t that goes down in groups' is what we've be doing after each of the stand ups.

I'll keep standing by their stand ups and look forward to seeing them getting on with great progress and celebrating - whether they stumble, fall, get up, fail, or go wildly beyond what they were expecting.

Are you standing up yet?

The Accelerated Meeting Framework

'Everybody in the house put your hands up'... who would prefer that meetings went on l-o-n-g-e-r  than they already do?

And keep your hands up if you'd like those meetings to achieve even less than they do now?

Urgh - so many meetings are just a time, energy, mood and productivity waste that we can't even be bothered putting our hands up!

But what to do? How to keep it short, sharp, focused and driving towards outcomes?

Try my Accelerated Meeting Framework:

1. Start with the background - no interruptions, just set the scene of why we're here, what we're gonna do and the facts and data that inform where we're at now. 

2. Then open it up - stand back and let the talking and opinions fly. Let people have their say, put forward their viewpoint and get it off their chest. Be sure to make visual and visible note of the key things people are contributing. Keep it to the topic, share the contribution and 'air time' around. Beware, this is where things can go around in circles - summarise what the main views are. 

3. Generate ideas and opportunities, possibilities and potential. List them and visually capture them so people can see. Narrow down the ones that are quick wins, easy to implement, partially done (see my blog on Stop Starting, Start Finishing) or will bring a great return on investment. 

4. List the actions that are to be followed up and implemented. Put names and dates next to those. Make it visual and visible, so people can see what you've worked through and where you've got to. 

Done. 

The success of meetings, workshops and strategy sessions is judged on what is done, what is achieved and what progress is made.

You're responsible for leading a team to great progress. 

Use visuals with your meeting and you'll reduce meeting time by 25%.

Use my Accelerated Meeting Framework and you'll get through more, quicker.