In roughly chronological order.
This advice comes from perspective of trying to get contributions from diverse research groups, that often mix career stages and cultural backgrounds. But much of it is useful in any context (e.g. more formal contexts.)
Be prepared.
Show up early, so you can familiarise yourself with the room set-up.
If its online, familiarise yourself with the software features before the meeting (where chat box is, where Q&A box is, what people see when you speak, is sharing enabled etc…)
Prepare your introductory and closing notes.
Check the agenda with someone more experienced if need be - people often try to cram too much into a meeting. One way to save meeting time for discussion is to pre-send reading for the group.
Come prepared with an opening that will set the scene and topic of the meeting. Remind people of the time slot for the meeting, and its goals. Remind them of expectations e.g. who is speaking, what to do if you disagree (if neccessary).
As facilitator people will look to you for leadership on how the meeting goes. Your approach will affect:
If you don’t provide that leadership, then that role will default to the most senior person or the person who talks the most.
So grab your facilitator role by the reins and show the group how its going to be.
Be present. Keep on your toes. By this I mean actually listen to what other people are saying, rather than thinking about what you will say when other people talk.
Engaging everyone helps everyone feel heard and helps get contributions from all participants.
Show other people you are listening: eye contact, nodding, hand gestures.
Reflect back to people what they’ve just said. This is active listening. For instance, if Alice described how she was satisified with the progress on the project” you could respond “Thanks Alice, I see that you’re happy with how the project is going” (rather than just nodding).
Draw in people, especially the quiet ones. For instance, if Selena describes an issue she is having with the data analysis on the project you could hand it over to Takuya: “Takuya, I know you’ve written about network modelling, do you have experiences from that work you could share to help Selena”
If you don’t know their backgrounds that is ok to! You can just ask someone to reflect like: “Takuya, what do you think about what Selena just said” or “Takuya, can you describe the problem Selena is having in your own words?”
This reflection opportunity can be helpful to engage people, but also see problems from different perspectives.
If you start asking people to reflect on each other’s comments, everyone will pay more attention to what is being said.
A common mistake as facilitator is to think you need to answer the questions that are posed. Then the facilitator ends up talking with their own answers. You don’t answer them.
You are there to help the group find a solution. So if a problem/question comes up, use your facilitator skills to kick it onto someone else like “Muhammad, what do you think about Maria’s question?”
If the group solves a problem, even if you knew the answer, then you are doing successful facilitation.
The tactful way is to smoothly transition the conversation away from them, by taking over their sentences. Its hard to put this in text but here goes:
Overtalker: “What I’m talking about is the absolute lack of data in…” Facilitator (finishes the sentence) “the models. That’s a really important insight John. I’d like to pass on to Eva for her perspective on this issue”.
But this is partly highly cultural. e.g. in some cultures the senior members need to be let to speak as much as they want, in other cultures it might be more appropriate to let minority groups speak first. Some cultures this is fast and seamless. Others you would leave a long pause between sentences.
This is really difficult. And we all tend to overtalk in online meetings because we aren’t getting as much visual feedback from our participants! If you have advice let me know. A couple tips:
Sometimes I just talk over them like in the ‘people who talk too much’ example. The key thing is to show you’ve heard by reflecting their thoughts back to them in your own words. If you abruptly change topics it may seem rude.
See notes above about engaging particpants. Just try to be aware of who they are and keep a mental checklist of who is doing the talking.
What to do if the conversation is going in the wrong direction, or you are running out of time?
Follow above advice for people who talk too much to transition the conversation to where you want it to go.
Just remember to acknowledge the person you are taking the platform from. A bad example
“So we are running out of time, let’s move on”
Good example:
“Thanks for those important insights Anya. I think we need to follow-up to properly explore those ideas. Now I’d like to just take us back to the agenda…”
Sometimes people express anger, frustration or deep sadness in meetings. Sometimes there is conflict that goes beyond healthy collegial debate. These situations can be difficult and need to be treated case-by-case, particularly if they involve ongoing issues in group dynamics.
The only general point I can make is to acknowledge the feelings. For example, you could say, “Rachael, are you feeling angry about what was just said?”
This helps the person feel heard. But also helps you take the floor back from the conflict.
How you go from there depends on the situation. If its sadness (like a colleague drops the news that they lost a friend recently) and you are in a supportive group, you could offer condolences and reflections as a group, just generally show kindness.
If its serious conflict yuo might like to ask the person to come outside for a private chat (and delegate facilitation to someone else while you are gone).
I’ll leave that there, as I am no expert on conflict resolution.
Its polite to finish on time. You should aim to finish early, to allow time to wrap up. Also people may have ‘last thoughts’ just when you were going to finish. For example for a 50 minute meeting start at 11am:
11:35am - Start bringing the conversation back to the agenda 11:40am - Ask for any last thoughts 11:45am - Provide wrap-up, reflection, next steps and actions.
Save time to wrap-up the meeting. This can include:
If it is an action orientated meeting, you should also finish by stating the next steps.
I much prefer in-person meetings. Online meetings are more less like conversations and more like he talks, she talks, he talks, she talks.
Meetings that are simultaneously online and in person are the worst.
A few tips:
Facilitation is a foundational skill for most careers. But few of us practice it or put much thought into it. It does take practice and commitment to do it well. But its also rewarding to see your team flourish and everyone get more out of meetings.
Designed by Chris Brown. Source on Github