Author: Michael Wilkinson

In today ’s business world many meetings take place virtually using a variety of media, including the Internet, videoconferencing, the telephone, and other technology vehicles that allow participants to be in different geographical areas. Although these virtual media can reduce the cost of meetings, they can also present significant challenges to the facilitator. For despite the geographical dispersion, the facilitator must still find a way to get the participants excited from the very beginning, keep everyone engaged and focused on the objective, gather and document the critical information, build consensus, manage dysfunction, keep the energy high, and close with a clear understanding of what was accomplished, the value of the accomplishment, and the steps to be taken once the meeting ends.

In my new book, The Secrets of Facilitation, 2^nd Edition, I included an entire chapter on The Secrets to Facilitating Virtual Meetings. Here is one of the secrets from the book on preparing for the meeting.

Secret #63- The Secret to Preparing for a Virtual Meeting

In your preparation, select the appropriate technology and plan and prepare your facilitation methods so that everyone will be able to “see.”

Whenever possible with virtual meetings, consider using technology that will allow all participants to see the same information. In face-to-face meetings, flip charts serve as a major focusing tool; similarly, virtual meetings are far more productive when participants are seeing the meeting output created as the meeting is progressing. Having the meeting information visible can keep participants engaged, reduce off-topic conversations, minimize misunderstandings caused by people mishearing information, and provide a method for identifying and correcting when the facilitator has misunderstood a point that is made.

The number of tools available to assist facilitators with virtual meetings continues to grow. At the time of this publication, the more popular ones include WebEx, Live Meeting, Adobe Connect, GotoMeeting, Join.Me, Skype, Google Docs, Powernoodle, ThinkTank, TeamViewer, iLinc, and iMeet.

• For basic desktop sharing functions that allow others to see your screen while the meeting is progressing, tools that are free or relatively inexpensive, such as GotoMeeting, Join.Me, Skype, and Goggle Docs, may be more than adequate.
• When you need more robust capabilities, such as the ability to divide into breakout groups or have participants simultaneously record on a whiteboard, more powerful tools, such as WebEx, Live Meeting, or Adobe Connect, may be more appropriate.

Whatever tool you select, consider the following to help ensure that you are fully prepared with the tool. (These suggestions are adapted with permission from Challenges of Virtual and Blended Meetings, by Rachel Smith, director of digital facilitation services at the Grove Consultants International.)

• Spend time practicing with the technology before the meeting. Be sure to load any files you will be showing and to run through all the tools and options you think you might use. Consider practicing using two computers, one showing what you will see and one showing what participants will see, to ensure that you understand what you and the participants will experience.
• Offer to give a brief orientation session to participants in advance of the meeting to increase the comfort of those who are unfamiliar with the technology. The orientation session can also serve to identify potential technology problems early.
• If possible, arrange to have someone on hand during the session that can answer technical questions and help attendees who get stuck. Having a partner working with you to handle technical issues will allow you to keep the meeting running smoothly while your partner assists attendees in trouble.
• Ask attendees who are calling in from their computers to use a headset or earphones. When people don’t use a headset or earphones, their computer microphone can sometimes pick up the output from the speakers and broadcast it back into the conference. Although the offender often can’t hear this, others on the call will likely hear feedback or echoes.
• If some people simply can’t use a headset or earphones, ask them to keep their microphone muted unless they are speaking.

Preparing for a Virtual Meeting

Along with preparing the technology, there are several other preparation steps, starting with identifying your 5 Ps.

• Define the 5 Ps for the session: the purpose, product, participants, probable issues, and process.
• When defining the process, think carefully through O-P-Q-R-S-T for the virtual setting.
• What is the most appropriate Order of the processes?
• What Process technique (for example, listing, brainstorming, or grouping) will you use with each agenda item?
• What will be your type B starting Question for each agenda item?
• How will you Record the responses for the agenda topic? Will you be using a Word document, PowerPoint, or whiteboard?
• What Supplies do you need for the session? Although the session is virtual, consider what other tools you might need, such as pen and paper to diagram who is on the call.
• What’s your estimate of the Timing for each agenda item?
• Distribute a meeting notice in advance of the session, stating the purpose, the product, the agenda, and proposed ground rules, and that include any relevant handouts. The meeting notice should indicate what documents participants need to have for the meeting and any advance preparation required. If participants from multiple time zones are attending the meeting, be sure to specify the time zone when informing participants of the start and end times.
• As with face-to-face meetings, state a gathering time and a start time in the meeting notice. The gathering time should be ten to fifteen minutes before the start time to have everyone logged in and ready to go prior to the official start of the meeting.
• In planning the meeting, limit agenda items so that the entire call can be completed in two hours or less to help participants maintain focus. If necessary, break the meeting into several calls.
• Consider having participants do preliminary brainstorming and submit their ideas prior to the meeting. You can summarize these ideas into “brainstorm lists” and send them in advance to participants along with the agenda and other written materials. This advance preparation allows more time in the meeting to be spent grouping, prioritizing, or evaluating the brainstormed material.
• If there are multiple people at the same location, consider having them assemble for the meeting in a conference room or some other suitable environment. Having as many as possible in the same room promotes teamwork and helps people avoid the temptation to multitask (for example, answer emails) during the meeting. With each “call-in” location, consider appointing a scribe to document key points on flip charts during the meeting.
• Prior to the meeting, create a list that shows the name and location of each person expected in the meeting.

For the next virtual meeting you facilitate, try these techniques. Expect that the preparation will take you about twice as long the first time, as you will be establishing new tools and approaches.

Read more in “The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition.”

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For more resources, see the Library topic Facilitation.

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Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., “The Facilitation Company” and author of the brand new “The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition”, “The Secrets to Masterful Meetings”, and the brand new “The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy.” Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. They are also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

Every trainer and facilitator has his/her favorite team building activity. Some facilitators like the more active interventions such as rope courses; others prefer the more “touchy-feely” ones like trust walks; still others like using blind-folded instruction, or simulations like Gold of the Desert Kings.

Of course the most appropriate team building activity for a group depends on a number of factors, including your overall purpose, the nature of the group, the amount of time you have, the limitations of the space, etc.

Yet, of all the team building activities I have experienced, my favorite by far is an activity called Crossing the River. I’ll describe the exercise first and then I’ll tell you why I think it is so great.

Crossing the River is ideal for 8-16 people. If you have up to 24, you can choose several to be observers and assign them different sections of the Points for Observation. If you have more than 24, you can split into multiple teams that do the exercise all at the same time, each with their separate “rivers” they have to cross. I have done this with 16 teams simultaneously in a very large room. As each team completed, they let out a team cheer.

What makes Crossing the River so great for team building?

1. The goal requires team planning and execution; the team has to come together for success.
2. No one can do it on his/her own; the team either succeeds or fails together.
3. The exercise breaks down barriers; it requires people to share their thoughts, share their resources, and share their space.
4. And perhaps most interestingly, the time limit creates a sense of urgency that frequently results in people defaulting to the same behaviors that do in the workplace: those who typically takeover, do so in this exercise; people who drop out, also do the same; people who frequently serve as naysayers, often take on this same role when faced with Crossing the River.

For years I have been looking for a second team building exercise as good as this one. If you have one I would love to hear from you.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Facilitation.

__________________________

Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., “The Facilitation Company” and author of the brand new “The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition”, “The Secrets to Masterful Meetings”, and the brand new “The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy.” Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. They are also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

Facilitators often use breakout groups to increase involvement and get more done in a short amount of time. However, following breakout groups, there is typically a report-back process. During the report-back, each team presents its results to the other teams. Yet, one of the challenges with the standard report-back process is that people generally are not as attentive to what other teams are saying: some people may be still preparing their own report-back; while others may feel little obligation to give quality feedback, given the number of other people in the room.

Over the years, I have adopted a different process for report-back that I call rotating review. I believe the process is quite effective for achieving quality feedback on the work of breakout groups.

During a rotating review, each team has three-to-five minutes to review another team’s work. Using a colored pen assigned specifically to that reviewing team, the team places a check mark on each item to indicate agreement. They indicate disagreement by placing an “X” and posting a comment on how to improve. After the time limit is reached, teams then rotate to the next chart and perform the same review, while also reviewing the comments of all past reviewers of that chart.

When the teams rotate back to their own flip charts, they will see multiple check marks in different colors to indicate those teams that agree with each item in their report. They will also see where disagreement resulted and the number of teams that concurred with that disagreement. The teams now review all the disagreements and indicate whether they agree (YES) or disagree (NO) with the written comment. At this point, all NOs are reviewed by the entire group and final decisions made.

The rotating review process allows each team to receive focused review from each of the other teams. This process also increases the participation and ownership of the entire work by all members. And surprisingly, the rotating review process takes about the same amount of time as the standard report-back process!

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For more resources, see the Library topic Facilitation.

__________________________

Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., “The Facilitation Company” and author of the brand new “The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition”, “The Secrets to Masterful Meetings”, and the brand new “The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy.” Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. They are also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

Good Tuesday afternoon to you! It’s been awhile since I’ve had the pleasure of writing for you all and I’m very glad to be be back at it. Today we are going to explore one of the most essential set of things to consider at the very beginning of a facilitated session – The 5 P’s of Preparation.

While purpose is the key element of preparation, there are several other components as well. What does it take to be prepared for a facilitated interaction? Facilitators know that whether they are preparing for running a task force meeting, delivering a presentation or meeting with a customer, the secret to preparation is the same: they must achieve a clear understanding of the “5 P’s.”

• The “Purpose” explains the overall aim. Why are we holding this session?
• The “Product” defines the items that must be produced to achieve the purpose. What do we want to have when we are done?
• The “Participants” identifies the people who need to be involved. Who are the participants and what are their perspectives?
• The “Probable Issues” defines the concerns that will likely arise. What are the probable issues that will need to be addressed?
• The “Process” details the steps that will be taken to create the product, taking into account the Participants and Probable Issues. How will we go about achieving the purpose, given the product desired, the participants and the probable issues we will face?

Of course there can be numerous logistics involved in preparing for a facilitated meeting, such as timing, location, materials, etc. However, it is important to be aware of these five critical steps. Facilitators tend to focus on these elements to gain a clear understanding of what is to be accomplished, why and how.

Applying the 5 P’s

The previous section described the importance of understanding the 5 P’s. But how does one go about defining these elements? Who is responsible for providing the answers to the 5 P’s? As you will see, it depends.

Applying the 5 P’s to a Meeting

If you are the meeting leader, then prior to the meeting you will need to identify the purpose of the meeting and the desired products. Understanding these two will help you determine the appropriate participants. As you consider the topic of the meeting, the participants and past history related to the topic, the probable issues will likely become apparent. Once these other four Ps are known, you can then create the process (an agenda) for the meeting. The process will need to achieve the purpose, create the product and cover the issues you identified. As you will see in a subsequent chapter, “The Secrets of Start a Facilitated Session,” it is important that you confirm the process with the meeting participants at the very beginning of the meeting.

If you are facilitating a meeting for someone else, the person who answers most of the 5 P’s will likely be the “sponsor” of the activity. Just as with the description above of managing a task force, the sponsor can typically provide answers for the purpose, product, participants and probable issues. You as the meeting facilitator are responsible for determining the process.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Facilitation.

__________________________

Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., “The Facilitation Company” and author of the forthcoming “The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition”, “The Secrets to Masterful Meetings”, and the brand new “The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy.” Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. They are also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

The Secret of the Starting Question

The ability of the group to respond to a question is significantly impacted by the quality of the question asked by the facilitator. The starting question is the term we, at Leadership Strategies, use for the question the facilitator asks to begin a discussion. Typically, a starting question is used at the beginning of every agenda item in a facilitated process. For example, for creating a plan to fix the hiring problem a facilitator might use the following agenda:

A. Getting started (purpose, personal objectives, process, ground rules)

B. How does the process work today?

C. What are the problems and root causes?

D. What are potential improvements?

E. How might we priorities these improvements?

F. How will the new process work?

F. How will we implement this new process?

G. Review and close

Agenda items B through F represent the core of the work for the facilitated session. For each of these agenda items, there is a time when the facilitator asks a question and expects the participants to begin responding. The ability of the group to respond to a question is significantly impacted by the quality of the question asked by the facilitator. It is much like starting a fire. If the facilitator uses the wrong material to ask the question, he will get this flickering flame that he has to blow on and feed continually to just keep it going. If the facilitator uses the right material, she will quickly have a bonfire of responses with people hardly able to wait to make their contributions.

What is the secret of the starting question? How do you get the bonfire of responses? Let’s examine these two questions to understand the secret.

Question Type A: “The first thing we want to talk about are inputs. What are the inputs to the scheduling process?”

Question Type B: “If you were about to develop the school schedule, what information would you need to have close by?”

What is it about the second question that makes it a better question? When we make this same inquiry to people we train in facilitation skills, here are a sample of responses we get:

While these are true points, they don’t quite focus directly on the secret of the starting question. When we take the students through a quick exercise, they understand the secret in a way they helps them to retain it. The facilitator asks the students to close their eyes and listen to question type A. After saying the question, the facilitator asks them to open their eyes and to raise their hands if they saw something as he was reading the question. One or two typically say they saw a flow chart or diagram or something of that sort. Most indicate they saw nothing. However, when the facilitator asks them to close their eyes a second time and to then listen to question type B, we have a different result. Typically two-thirds, if not more, see an image. The image described by most involves sitting at a desk with items they use for scheduling arranged on the desk. Herein lies the secret of the starting question.

Why is a vivid image key to the starting question? When the facilitator draws a vivid image, the participants can literally “see” the answers, and can begin responding right away.

Type A versus Type B Questions

Contrast this with the Type A starting question. While a Type B starting question draws a vivid image, the Type A starting question simply asks what you as the facilitator want to know. If you want to know the inputs to the scheduling process, you ask “What are the inputs to the scheduling process?” After you ask the question, the participants have to put their hands to their heads and begin thinking of answers. What are they doing? They are probably trying to imagine themselves back at their school the last time they did scheduling. They are probably trying to draw the image that the facilitator did not draw for them! Unfortunately, this effort usually results in the room going silent for several moments – just at the time when the facilitator is looking for responses. In essence, due to the poor starting question, the facilitator has driven the room silent!

It is important to recognize that Type A questions are the “default.” If you do not think about your question in advance, more times than not you will ask a Type A question. For example, suppose the agenda calls for the group to identify problems with the current hiring process. If you have not prepared an image building Type B question in advance, more than likely you will ask a Type A question (“What are the problems you have encountered with the hiring process?”).

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For more resources, see the Library topic Facilitation.

__________________________

Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., “The Facilitation Company” and author of Amazon best-seller “The Secrets of Facilitation”, “The Secrets to Masterful Meetings”, and the brand new “The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy.” Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. They are also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

In the case study that started this chapter, we indicated that there are a number of different roles for a facilitator:

Meeting Adviser – The facilitator helps the leader plan the meeting, but during the session, he primarily sits on the sidelines, stepping in only when asked or if a situation occurs which the participants cannot handle themselves.

Meeting Manager – The facilitator sets the agenda, establishes ground rules, initiates the discussion, and allows the session to flow, stepping in only when needed.

Meeting Leader – The facilitator sets the agenda, establishes ground rules and initiates the discussion just as the meeting manager does. In addition, however, he is active in getting participants excited about participating. The facilitator describes the purpose of the session in terms that gives the participants a much bigger picture of the importance of the session. In addition, he is active in ensuring that all participants engage in the discussion. The facilitator challenges the participants when the discussion appears to remain at a high level. And, from time to time, the facilitator offers insights that may be otherwise overlooked.

Participating Facilitator – The facilitator starts out much like a meeting manager, setting the agenda, establishing ground rules, and initiating the discussion. But the facilitator also actively engages as a participant in the discussion, frequently offering his own views, giving opinions on topics, and expressing disagreement with various comments.

Each of these roles is valid for support of a meeting. However, in our organization we focus on the facilitator as Meeting Leader. When you serve as the facilitator in this role, we believe you have seven specific responsibilities:

Guide You must know the steps of the process the group will execute from beginning to end. You must carefully guide the participants through each of the step.

Motivator From the rousing opening statement to the closing words of cheer, you must ignite a fire within the group and keep it well lit. You must establish momentum and keep the pace.

Visionary You must create a vision for the group of why the meeting is important.

Bridge Builder You must create and maintain a safe and open environment for sharing ideas. Where other people see differences, you must find and use similarities to establish a foundation for building bridges to consensus.

Clairvoyant Throughout the session, you must watch carefully for signs of potential strain, weariness, aggravation and dis-empowerment — and respond in advance to avoid dysfunctional behavior.

Peacemaker While it is almost always better to avoid a direct confrontation between participants, should such an event occur, you must quickly step in, re-establish order and direct the group toward a constructive resolution.

Taskmaster You are ultimately responsible for keeping the session on track; this means tactfully cutting short irrelevant discussions, preventing detours and maintaining a consistent level of detail throughout the session.

Praiser At every opportunity, you should praise the effort put forth, the progress made, and the results achieved. Praise well, praise often, praise specifically.

After playing so many roles, is there any wonder why a facilitator is typically exhausted after even a relatively short facilitated session?

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For more resources, see the Library topic Facilitation.

__________________________

Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., “The Facilitation Company” and author of Amazon best-seller “The Secrets of Facilitation”, “The Secrets to Masterful Meetings”, and the brand new “The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy.” Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. They are also a leading provider of facilitation trainingin the United States.

A major difference between leading and facilitating is that a leader often tells; a facilitator always asks. In my book, The Secrets of Facilitation, I described how I learned what I call the fundamental secret of facilitation.

I began understanding the secret during my career with the management consulting division of what was then one of the Big-8 accounting and consulting firms. In the eight years I spent in that consulting practice, we had a standard way of addressing a client problem. We might be called in to review a particular department or activity. We would arrive with our army of bright people, interview those whom we believed were the key stakeholders, develop a set of recommendations based on our interviews and experience, and create what might be called the “100% Solution.” We would go away and come back a year later and perhaps, if we were lucky, 15% of the recommendations would be implemented.

In my final years with that organization, the practice in which I worked began taking a different approach. We would come in with a smaller group of consultants and work shoulder to shoulder with client personnel. Together we would convene group interviews (facilitated sessions) which typically included 8-20 people. In the facilitated sessions, the participants would create the recommendations, not the consultants. In most cases, they would only come up with what we might consider the 60% or 70% solution. So we would float ideas based on our experience. Some they would accept, others they would reject as “not beneficial” or “not implementable” in their environment. When all was done, they might have created what we would consider “the 85% solution.” Yet a year later, when we came back, amazingly 80-90% of the solution would be implemented!

Why wasn’t more of the “100% solution” implemented? Why would the “85% solution” gained through facilitation achieve far greater success? Therein lies the secret and the power behind it.

Secret #1
If they create it, they understand it and they accept it.

As an expert consultant, we were “telling” our clients what they needed to do. As a result, there was very little buy-in by our clients and their people. When we began “asking” the questions that resulted in them creating their own answers, the difference was staggering.

Dr. Robert Zawacki from the University of Colorado in his book “Transforming the Mature Information Technology Organization” put the secret this way:

ED = RD x CD
Effective Decisions = The Right Decision times Commitment to the Decision

Dr. Zawacki’s point is that the multiplication sign in the formula means that even the best decision can be rendered completely ineffective if commitment to the decision is lacking.

You can achieve more effective results when solutions are created, understood and accepted by the people impacted.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Facilitation.

__________________________

Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., “The Facilitation Company” and author of Amazon best-seller “The Secrets of Facilitation”, “The Secrets to Masterful Meetings”, and the brand new “The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy.” Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. They are also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.