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What is Meeting Facilitation?
Home » Management » Meeting Facilitation » What is Meeting Facilitation?If you’ve ever conducted a meeting, you’ve practiced the act of Meeting Facilitation. It doesn’t matter whether two or twenty people were in attendance; what matters is that you scheduled, hosted, and concluded a meeting. Meeting Facilitation is just that: Running a meeting, from start to finish.
Successful Meeting Facilitation isn’t as simple as it might sound. Sure, some meetings run themselves. But a large majority of meetings require a fair amount of prep work, finagling, and finesse to make sure everyone is prepared, present, and participating in meeting the goal of your meeting.
One main point: Facilitation is a method of serving the needs of the participants. This differs from leading the meeting discussion, during which a person might try to persuade others to their way of thinking, entertain the group, or otherwise get involved. The point of meeting facilitation is simply to set the stage, guide the discussion, and serve as mediator to allow the group to come to a conclusion on their own.
According to The International Association of Facilitators, a group founded in 1993 to promote facilitation as a profession, the follow are other ways facilitators serve in meetings:
- Helping the group determine a set of ground rules, and reminding them when those rules aren’t followed.
- Keeping track of time.
- Reminding the group of the meeting’s objectives.
- Setting up a safe environment in which participants feel comfortable contributing ideas.
- Paraphrasing contributions to check understanding and make sure the group heard them.
- Recording agreements reached.
- Recording current issues within the group.
- Helping the group find the best possible solution, not just the first option.
- Helping tentative group members come forward with contributions.
- Ensuring that agreed-upon actions are assigned to individuals to carry out.
On the other hand, meeting facilitators do not:
- Back a particular opinion voiced in the group.
- Offer their own opinions.
- Let the group unconsciously shy away from a difficult area.
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