A facilitated structured meeting or workshop provides an environment designed to extract high-quality information in a compressed timeframe. A structured meeting uses visual aids and a team of experts to accelerate projects and increase the quality of decisions, outputs, deliverables, and outcomes.

Therefore, the major components of the MGRUSH structured meeting technique include:

1. A model life cycle and methodology that eases adapting MGRUSH to a variety of planning, analysis, and design methodologies
2. An intensive educational forum providing the necessary facilitation and communication skills, tools, and an understanding of facilitated meeting roles—not dogma or other inflexible, guru-like perspectives
3. Collaborative activities designed to encourage discovery and promote innovation
4. Stress-tested workshop and meeting approaches molded to fit most project situations
5. Proficient leadership, based on critical skills such as:

• • active listening
  • appropriate questioning
  • clear thinking
  • content neutrality
  • contextual passion
  • effective presenting
  • illustration and metaphor
  • solid preparation

6. Project management and risk analysis support
7. Expert resources (such as MGRUSH alumni tools and the Professional Reference Manual)
8. Ten uniquely defined roles including session leader, documenter(s), meeting designer, business partner, technical partner, executive sponsor, team members, participants, coordinator, and observers
9. Stimulating visual communication aids, used appropriately by a trained and certified professional facilitator.

A Structured Meeting is NOT

A structured meeting or workshop is NOT a replacement for analytical methodologies. A structured meeting or workshop works with methodologies to generate a uniform voice by providing an efficient two-way flow of information, from one person or group to another. Consequently, information developed with a consensual method provides value by becoming the foundation for additional information gathering, development, and decisions.

Session Leader

A neutral session leader (i.e., facilitator/ methodologist) provides the keystone for structured workshops. The session leader understands the preparation requirements, group dynamics, and appropriate methodology. Therefore, the session leader is responsible for managing the approach—the agenda, the ground rules, the flow of the conversation, etc.—but not the content of the discussion, or even necessarily the project(s) being supported by the discussion and decisions.

Effective Facilitator

Various academic research has found that the most effective type of facilitator was one that actively elicited questions and responses from the quietest participants to enable a balance among the players. Consequently, effectiveness is best achieved by building a safe and trustworthy environment, one that provides “permission to speak freely,” without fear of reprisal or economic loss.

Defined Products

Finally, the type of documentation generated drives workshop techniques. Some use templates to organize the notes taken during a workshop. The information collected starts out as raw or draft notes. Draft notes provide formal input to the project process. However, the meeting or workshop is not synonymous with the project, rather it compliments additional tasks and activities performed before and after the meeting or workshop, typically by the project team. A clear and consensually agreed upon path of next steps and “WHO does WHAT by WHEN” becomes the most common deliverable of meetings and workshops.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)

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Facilitation Expert

Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.