What are the top strategies for improving meeting outcomes through facilitation?

When defining goals, adhere to the SMART criteria: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. SMART goals also lay the foundation for effective evaluation, enabling you to gauge progress and success with tangible metrics.

From my perspective, the cornerstone of effective meeting facilitation lies in defining a clear purpose and specific goals. I believe that by anchoring the meeting in these objectives, we can streamline our agenda, set clear expectations, and ultimately measure success. From my experience, such a proactive approach is pivotal in optimizing meeting outcomes.

Many people complain about having too many meetings. A key reason for this is the lack of purpose and goal-setting for these meetings OR having a wrong audience for the meeting. For a meeting to be successful, participants should know its purpose and goals and have some time to prepare. It is also important that right audience is been invited. If you are planning to do decisions, it’s better to target to bare minimum audience instead of having people invited just in case. When meeting is been planned it is also important to define who is the facilitator to take care of these things.

When planning the purpose and goals for a meeting, it’s really helpful to get the participants in on the action early. Asking for their ideas or feedback on what we’re aiming to achieve can ramp up engagement and productivity big time. Plus, it sidesteps any mismatch in expectations between you as the facilitator and the group. It’s all about getting everyone on the same page from the start.

Preparing participants is like tuning instruments before a concert. Send materials early, set norms, and ensure a conducive environment for effective facilitation.

Establish clear communication channels beforehand by sharing the agenda, objectives, and any relevant materials in advance. This not only familiarizes participants with the meeting's purpose but also allows them to come prepared, fostering more informed and constructive contributions.

Setting up a meeting involves more than just sending an invitation. The importance of an agenda, clear purpose & goals, and well-defined pre-work cannot be overstated. At the same time, you need to think about and communicate the decision-making styles for the meeting (unless the goal is not to make decisions). The decision style that will be used also impacts how team members prepare for the meeting.

Craft questions that encourage participants to articulate their thoughts more fully, fostering a more comprehensive exploration of ideas. Demonstrate genuine interest in their perspectives, fostering an environment where diverse viewpoints are not only acknowledged but also integrated into the discussion.

The crux of improving meeting outcomes lies in the art of active listening and astute questioning. I believe that by truly hearing participants and using probing questions, we can generate ideas, resolve conflicts, and foster a collaborative environment. From my perspective, these skills are pivotal in ensuring engaged participation and meaningful discussions.

Active listening is a skill that can’t be emphasized enough. You need to listen to understand what others are trying to communicate. With the help of paraphrasing, you can foster shared understanding. For meetings, I highly recommend separating the discussion and decision stages. To enable fruitful discussion, people should feel they are in an environment where ideas are heard instead of shot down. Hence, the discussion stage should focus more on gathering ideas and having an open dialogue without shooting any idea down. Then at the decision stage, you need to be able to drive consensus.

Visual aids are extremely important methods to help drive shared understanding and ensure all voices are heard. A whiteboard (or e.g. Word doc in e-meetings) can be used just to write simple points from each person’s point of view. When it’s written down, people see that their input has been heard. Another point I would highlight here is the transparency of the decision-making process. This should have been clearly communicated before you start making decisions. It’s a totally different thing to seek consensus within the room or to make decisions based on a consultative decision-making process.

Managing time and energy really starts when you send the invitation – make sure that the audience is right and scope (purpose and goal) is defined. With time management, people typically have too little time to cover topics. Based on my experience, this is actually more due to the fact that the scope of the meeting hasn’t been clarified and there’s scope creep. Another thing that makes it hard to keep up with the schedule is the number of people in the meeting. When there are too many people, you easily have many comments OR people are just quiet which then reduces energy from the meeting.

A good meeting ends with a clearly communicated summary of decisions and next actions. This should not be a repetition of all discussion points. You should think of a good summary as a document that would help someone who didn’t participate understand the outcome of the meeting. You can and should leave out details about how decisions were made from this summary (“the sausage making”). Remember that a summary is not just for those who weren’t in the meeting – it should also serve as a joint agreement for those who were in attendance. Hence, it’s important to stick with agreed-upon points.

In practice, four errors can be observed: Misconception 1: Being there is everything! Misconception 2: Those who remain silent agree. Misconception 3: Sitting for a long time pays off. Misconception 4: Said is said. Six rules for effective team meetings For a manager who wants to avoid these mistakes and values effective team meetings, I recommend the following six rules: - Every meeting needs to be prepared. - The course of the meeting is determined and announced in advance. - Only those who need to be involved are invited. - Nothing is decided without the people concerned. - The agenda item "Other" does not exist. - There are only protocols of results.