We’ve all attended a meeting where the facilitator had a tough time managing the discussion and, sometimes, we’ve had the misfortune of being the facilitator. Whether the group ends up on a rabbit trail, someone dominates the conversation, or the time just slips away, a meeting like this can be a letdown if very little of value is achieved.
It can be easy to feel like these experiences are just an unfortunate and unavoidable fact of life, but the reality is that there are concrete steps you can take to make every meeting productive.
We’d like to share 5 facilitation best practices from research moderation that you can leverage to maximize the value of your next meeting.
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Prepare A Discussion Guide
- Define The Objectives. Write out 1-2 objectives for the meeting and memorize them. Throughout the conversation, keep them front of mind to ensure that you’re hitting each objective.
- Utilize Open-Ended Questions. Great group discussion is stimulated by questions that are broad and interesting. Since some questions produce terrific discussion and others fall flat, you’ll want to prepare at least 5 questions for a 30-minute meeting (it’s great to have a few in your back pocket just in case!).
- Ask Singular Questions. It’s difficult to think about more than one question at a time, so avoid “compound questions” which combine two or more questions into one (e.g., What time of day do you work best and what communication style do you prefer?).
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Introduce The Discussion And Then Listen
- Share The Meeting Objectives. People genuinely want to participate, and they need context to do so. Spend the first 5 minutes helping the group understand why the meeting is important by sharing the intended outcomes.
- Establish Ground Rules. Encourage the expression of different opinions, and agree as a group to stick to the topic.
- Apply The 80/20 Rule. After opening the meeting, your job as a facilitator is to actively listen, ask questions, and keep the conversation on track. As a general rule, at least 80 percent of your time should be spent listening and no more than 20 percent of your time talking.
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Demonstrate Genuine Interest
- Show Enthusiasm For The Topic. People respond best to facilitators who are optimistic and genuinely interested in the discussion. We’ve led groups on seemingly dull topics (like indigestion) that ended up being incredibly interesting discussions because the moderator demonstrated true engagement.
- Follow Up With Probes. As group members share their perspective, show that you are listening by asking simple follow-up questions. This demonstrates curiosity and will also help clarify the responses.
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Provide Leadership
- Guide Off-Topic Conversation. It’s inevitable: someone will go off topic. It’s your role as the facilitator to get the conversation back on track. One of the best ways to do this is to create a “parking lot” for off-track topics that the team can agree to pick up during a future meeting.
- Get Everyone Involved. You may have to directly call on those who haven’t yet shared in order to get quieter team members involved (bonus: you’ll often be pleasantly surprised at how valuable their perspectives are). A simple method is to ask the team member if they’ve experienced or heard about an approach to dealing with anything similar to the situation the team is discussing.
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Close By Reopening
- Ask The Group What Was Missed. A classic technique used by moderators is to ask the group, “What question wasn’t asked during this meeting that you think should have been?” In essence, this question reopens the conversation to any topic that was previously, but incompletely, discussed so that everyone has a chance to provide input once more before the meeting ends.