The primary responsibility of a facilitator is to protect the participants. Furthermore, the facilitator helps drive the group toward its desired deliverable. Since the deliverable is built to serve the participants, people should take priority over the issues. To some extent, both people and issues are managed by creating an environment that is conducive to productivity. Easier said, than done, to ensure meeting inclusiveness.

The International Association of Facilitators (IAF) aspires for you to:

• Encourage positive regard for the experience and perception of all participants
• Create a climate of safety and trust
• Create opportunities for participants to benefit from the diversity of the group
• Cultivate cultural awareness and sensitivity

Value of Meeting Inclusiveness

Dr. Edward de Bono provides expert insight into parallel thinking; i.e., there can be more than one correct answer. Listening to others, their perspectives, and rationale creates more robust products. Because of selective perception, the aggregation of all points of view provides stronger insight than any single point of view. When facilitating a group of nine people, for example, look for the tenth answer. Our technique refers to this concept as N+1, where N equals the number of participants, always seeking the +1 perspective, thus encouraging meeting inclusiveness.

Use of Meeting Ground Rules

Remember to embrace and enforce meeting and workshop Ground Rules to create a climate of safety and trust. See our discussion on Ground Rules for additional comments and suggestions.

Key to Innovation

Diversity, or plurality as we prefer to call it (suggesting the beauty of a mosaic rather than the fracturing of something), is undoubtedly the key to innovation. See de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats (modified to Seven Thinking Hats with the MGRUSH FAST technique to also include the “Process” or royal purple view) or other means of facilitating perspective found in your MGRUSH manual or other expert sources such as Roger von Oech’s Creative Whack Pack. Consider special Icebreakers, break-out sessions, or team-building exercises that emphasize the value of plurality because meeting inclusiveness follows integrative exercises. As a result, Scannell and Newstrom offer hundreds of options among other expert tools. Take this opportunity to leverage the tactile sense, and consider some of the professional Legos® activities or others designed to prove the value of plurality and its positive impact on the quality of deliverables.

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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 daily 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.