Research conducted by professor Cynthia Rudin of M.I.T. and student Been Kim, on highly effective words for business meetings, found that the words yeah, give, start, and meeting have a larger impact in meetings than other words. However, while discuss also made their list of effective words for business meetings—we warn you to be cautious. …
Research consistently reports that the three biggest, post Covid-19 challenges of facilitating virtual meetings are: Technology challenges Distractions (keeping participants engaged) Participant buy-in and hiding (video) In fact, facilitating virtual meetings requires more skills than facilitating meetings in person. Groups are less impacted by your good looks and charm while getting lulled into some of…
Whether you use Zoom, WebEx, GoToMeeting, or another virtual meeting platform, don’t blame the failure of your virtual meeting on technology. Why? Because you need to know what to do before you change how you do it. Just as an engineer wouldn’t attempt a complicated mathematical challenge on a calculator (or computer program) unless they…
Today we bring you quick tips for more effective meetings. “Distribution Talk With Jason Bader“, a podcast that exposes… “… the stories, struggles, and solutions from interesting characters who have chosen to make a career in the distribution industry.” ~ Jason Bader In Jason’s interview with Terrence Metz, Managing Director and Lead Facilitation Trainer for…
Meetings capture a huge investment of time. Unproductive meetings affect your cash flow, morale, and the potential growth of your biggest asset, your people. As frequent and important as we attend meetings, little (if any) structured training has been provided to help us become better meeting participants, and more importantly, meeting leaders. To build consensus,…
“Should we use an internal or external facilitator?” Good question. Everyone has experienced good and not-so-good facilitators. All too frequently, the ‘poor’ experiences can be attributed to the selection of the facilitator. Break that down further, and you may discover you chose an internal facilitator when you should have hired someone from outside your organization…
Clients frequently contact us about facilitating a meeting or workshop on behalf of an individual or organization. It might be a large, multi-national firm planning a complicated, and potentially expensive, deliverable. It could be a small, nonprofit organization seeking to get the most out of their busy board member’s time. While one organization seeks someone with…
Think of a meeting break as a pressure relief valve. Under normal circumstances, a standard ten-minute break, every seventy-five minutes or so, allows participants to decompress so they can return to the meeting refreshed and on track. However, when a minor disagreement threatens to explode into a full-blown situation, you need more than a standard…
Meetings are necessary. But not all meetings are good. To be more precise, not all meetings are run well. But how can you rescue a bad meeting if you’re not the one leading it? While our facilitation training focuses on creating better leaders, the truth is, most of us spend the majority of our time…
A Super Bowl without neutral referees? The World Series or World Cup without neutral umpires? Any tripartite government without the judicial branch? Conduct a meeting to build consensus without neutral facilitation? The answer to all of them – Don’t even think of it! We promote an evidence-based meeting approach that converts subjective points of view…