2019-06-05 New2EA Meeting Notes - Facilitating from the Side

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Facilitating from the Side

• How often are you in rambling meetings or meetings that are not focused?
  • If you're in a meeting that's not well run, look around the room, is everybody else "showing signs" that's it's going badly?
  • Are you or everybody else wondering why you are there?
  • Learn to recognize the signs
  • That's your chance to step in - facilitating from the side; help to get meeting back on track
  • Ask clarifying questions from a place of humility:
    • I'm just a bit confused
    • maybe I missed this in the e-mail
    • what is it we're trying to get to
    • at the end of the meeting you would like to have...,
    • and that means you want us to,
    • help you do this,
    • let me clarify this
  • set the goal, agenda, define the role of the participants
    • can I write them down? do you mind if I put that on the whiteboard?
    • if you have the pens then you kinda run the meeting
    • start offering activities to help,
      • you would like to get our input,
      • just so I know could you let me know what's in scope and out of scope,
      • agenda bash to put ideas on the whiteboard,
      • what do we want to talk about 1st,
      • sticky note exercise,
      • go around
  • I thought we'd review this document (that wasn't sent beforehand) - ask to postpone meeting
    • should we break out into small groups?
    • Structure and purpose of the document
    • Be clear on what it is people are doing
      • So who else had comments on X?
      • So what does this do?
      • Broker the conversation;
      • i didn't see anything about X, did anyone else have the same view?
    • Asking questions but structuring how it's going to happen
  • Be a time keeper for the meeting; start to provide time checks; there's 5 mins left should we start talking about next steps?
  • Can we take this away and read it? Use Google docs for team collaboration
  • Offer to help capture notes
  • Remember the goal and keep the meeting focused
    • Eg. move the "parking lot" outside the meeting room; "we're going to take that out of the room"
  • By asking questions what you end up with: goals for the meeting, defined the roles of the participants, define outcomes, scoped the conversations, developed a process by which we'll get there by suggesting activities, capture notes, provide time checks, push towards next steps , follow up afterwards
  • PROPER meeting guidelines, purpose, objectives
• Lenses:
  • Political Lens: who's meeting it is, who's in the room
  • Cultural Lens: how does this team/group work, are you the outsider
  • Control Lens: strong command and control structure, top down hierarchy,
  • is it worth your investment, is the meeting salvageable, are you going to be the facilitator for the next meetings, do you worry about your capital/cost/reputation
  • in political meetings you may be meeting with people above your pay grade, you may be nervous about it, come from humility makes it softer
• check framework for feedback
  • Reflect on how your facilitation from the side went/worked
  • Did you get what you wanted
  • Offering to help plan and run meetings
  • what are people going to get out of it, what's their role, what are they contributing, what are you going to get out of it
• agenda items: why is this here, what is it doing, what is it are you really going to get from it
• Table talk
  • it's an easier conversation to have face to face rather than Zoom
  • How to deal with detractors to a meeting; use facilitation techniques for effective meetings
  • use architects to take notes
  • Take notes in a public space where they can be seen; having a 2nd person in the room is also very useful
  • how to solicit feedback from persons not speaking up or perhaps shy or introvert; use sticky note exercises, write your top 3 ideas down, 1-2 for all, private-pair public, shift and comment
• Go around (for next meeting/topic): have someone to bring you back on track when you start breaking the rules, takes practice to from a judgement on whether to lean in harder or less

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