Facilitation

The art of healthy group conversations.

This is a list of practices I believe contribute to healthy and effective meetings. I don't do all of these consistently yet, and taken together they can sound rigid, even grognardy. But my best meeting experiences involved many of these at once and I find the structure frees us all up for collective thought. Note, these are focused on small meetings (up to 12 people) and are not necessarily appropriate for meetings with an “audience.”

Why: The time of our employees is our most valuable resource. A meeting with no purpose is a waste of time for everyone. A meeting with an unclear purpose also wastes time, because attendees may steer the meeting in unproductive directions, or stay when they are not needed. Also forces organizers to ask, “should this be a memo instead?”

How:

• The purpose must be clear in the meeting invite. A title is often insufficient, so include a full sentence in the description: “The goal of this meeting is…”
• Restate the purpose aloud at the start of the meeting, so folks can nope out or ask clarifying questions.
• Meetings should only include people necessary to accomplish their purpose, but in practice this is difficult to judge and as an inclusive practice organizers will invite more people than strictly necessary. Therefore, attendees may choose not to attend, and should be welcome to leave at any time if, in their own judgment, they are neither contributing to nor benefiting from the meeting's purpose. You'll notice senior folks cultivate a habit of doing this very early in a meeting.

Why: If a purpose is “what” the meeting will accomplish, the agenda is “how” the meeting will accomplish it. A good agenda empowers attendees to prepare, directs the focus of the group to improve listening, and protects the meeting's goal from unforeseen tangents and arguments.

How:

• The agenda should be shared ahead of time, usually in the meeting invite or a linked notes doc for easy reference.
• If the agenda is open for submissions, it should be easily edited by attendees without a gatekeeper.
• Every agenda item needs an assigned presenter/facilitator and a planned duration (although for large meetings this info is sometimes hidden from non-participating attendees.)
• Especially in certain kinds of meetings, it can also be helpful to label agenda items (Inform / Consult / Decide).
• When you reach the end of the agenda before time is up, ask “is there anything else this group needs to discuss?” and give the group five seconds to speak up. This is long enough for anyone who's been holding onto a thought the opportunity to raise it, but not long enough to pressure people to invent additional discussion on the spot. After five seconds, end the meeting early!
• A meeting without an agenda should be cancelled or rescheduled. If this isn't already a practice in the culture, you'll notice senior folks that refuse to attend a meeting without an agenda.

Why: Concretizing meeting outcomes with writings, drawings or other artifacts creates clarity, even if you never fully read through your archive of notes. It converges attendees' different recollections and interpretations. It encourages transparency to those who could not attend or were not invited. It promotes accountability.

How:

• Most meetings have notes for future reference and for the benefit of those who did not attend. Assign a note-taker, but anyone should have permission to edit the notes. Notes should be archived, easily found and searched.
  • How to take good notes is a separate topic and may depend on agreed norms.
• Most meetings also have action items. All action items should list a responsible individual and a deadline.
• The organizer may send key takeaways and action items in a followup memo, so that they don't get lost in the notes that we won't consistently reference.

Why: We think as a group through wide participation and productive disagreement; to do this kindly, safely and effectively, we adopt practices that encourage participation and minimize unproductive disagreement.

How: Agree on norms up front that establish accepted conduct in the meeting. In some meetings the group can borrow from company or team norms for this. In other meetings it is helpful to establish norms for the conversation at hand.

• Some norms I prefer to always have in place:
  • Criticize ideas, not people.
  • Assume good intentions.
  • Be curious and ask clarifying questions.
  • Bring a growth-oriented mindset.
  • Help one another identify our group's biases.
  • Prefer “open” disagreement to “shutdown” disagreement.
    e.g. “Well, we're definitely not going to do that.” shuts down the conversation, while “I don't think we should do that because…” is open to productive dissent.
• Some norms I find helpful in some settings, but not all:
  • What's shared in the room stays in the room / no attribution in notes.
  • Raise hands to indicate a desire to speak / no interruptions.
  • Everyone must speak up at least once.

I want to give special attention to encouraging participation. I've heard many leaders use the mantra “Silence is agreement” and while I understand the spirit of putting responsibility on participants to speak up, in my experience this approach is not sensitive to the preferences and power dynamics in the room. A quick improvement on typical meeting participation is giving folks many different ways to participate:

• Free-form discussion
• Giving everyone an explicit chance to speak, or facilitator calling on people.
• Asynchronous discussion in the notes doc or meeting chat (careful to be inclusive)
• Open pulse-check votes or anonymous polls.
• The parking lot - have a shared space (whiteboard, sticky notes, shared doc, Slido) where participants can add questions or comments without interrupting the flow of the meeting, and leave time to review them.

A skilled facilitator has a lot of power to encourage participation. From the old HBR article, “draw out the silent… protect the weak… come to the most senior people last.”

Clear roles also help keep things moving and minimize unproductive conflict

• The organizer is responsible for ensuring the meeting happens. They schedule the meeting, send invites, arrange a meeting space, circulate the agenda.
• The facilitator is responsible for accomplishing the purpose of the meeting, even though others may contribute. They run the meeting, moving through the agenda, asking the group to move on if a discussion is taking too long, enforcing agreed norms and nudging the conversation back towards the goal as needed. If a facilitator is not named, it's assumed to be the organizer.
• The note-taker is responsible for generating the meeting artifacts, even though others may contribute. If a note-taker is not named, it's assumed to be the facilitator but a separate note-taker is often a good idea.

Antony Jay, HBR / How To Run a Meeting (1976)

Matt Green, Skillcast / 12 Best Practices for Productive Meetings (2022)

Liz Keogh / How to run Safety Checks

(TODO) team meetings, workstream meetings, project meetings, issue meetings, leadership meetings, planning meetings, retrospectives…