by Facilitation Expert | Feb 7, 2013 | Facilitation Skills
Without effective leadership, you can win the agenda but lose the meeting. Meeting competence demands that you take responsibility to prevent collective incompetence.
For example, do not allow ‘showboating’ and meetings within meetings. Additionally, consider the following suggestions to improve meeting competence.
Meeting Competence Considers . . .
Meeting Competence Derives from the Discipline
- Acronyms and BuzzWords—Create a visual legend for cryptic terms. Participants assume that others understand everything they say. We may not but we do need a facilitator to help validate acronyms and buzzwords.
- Competition—do not allow participants to play political games. Keep them focused on the deliverable of each question, agenda item, and meeting result.
- Different Agendas—Ensure participants that you know where you are and where you are going and do not permit competing agendas that cause scope creep and meetings that go out of control.
- Distractions—The guiding principle for every facilitator is to remove distractions so that the group can focus on the issue at hand. Distractions range from creature comfort (e.g., temperature) to cultural (e.g., electronic leashes such as smartphones).
- Impotent Members—Many meetings involve people who are brought in to observe, rather than contribute. If so, separate them physically by seating them in the back or around the perimeter.
- Miscommunications—listen, observe, clarify, and confirm. Need we say more?
- Outside Pressures—Get to know your participants and some of the issues that drive their thinking and behavior. Complete your assessment before the meeting begins. You cannot conduct personality profiling during a meeting and be an effective listener at the same time.
- Personal Feelings—As a neutral facilitator, depersonalize issues that arise and have others focus on performance, not the people.
- Triviality—Do not allow your participants to dive too deep into the weeds and talk about HOW when most discussions should focus on WHAT needs to be different. If strategic issues (i.e., WHY) arise, set them aside for a different forum.
Meeting Competence May Demand that Less is Better
With meetings, less can be more. Holding unnecessary meetings can undermine your reputation. Do not confuse or substitute meetings for work. As a meeting participant, never attend to yourself without knowing what you want to accomplish during the meeting and what you need to take out of it. As we say repeatedly and illustrate as the title of the MG RUSH meeting competence holarchy, know what “DONE” looks like. Your meeting competence will follow.
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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.
Terrence Metz, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.
Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.
Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.
Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.
by Facilitation Expert | Jan 24, 2013 | Communication Skills, Decision Making, Facilitation Skills, Managing Conflict, Meeting Tools, Planning Approach, Problem Solving
First, here is the traditional Pros and Cons method according to its creator, Benjamin Franklin:
How to Facilitate Group or Team Decisions Using Pros and Cons
“For pros and cons, my way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; writing over the one pro, and over the other con; then during three or four days’ consideration, I put down under the different heads short hints of the different motives, that at different times occur to me. for or against the measure. When I have thus got them all together, in one view, I endeavor to estimate their respective weights; and, where I find two (one on each side) that seem equal, I strike them both out. If I find a reason pro equal to some two reasons con, I strike out the three.
He Continues . . .
If I judge some two reasons, con equal to three reasons pro, I strike out the five; and thus proceeding I find at length where the balance lies; and if, after a day or two of farther consideration, nothing new that is of importance occurs on either side, I come to a determination accordingly. Though the weight of reasons cannot be taken with the precision of algebraic quantities, yet, when each is thus considered separately and comparatively, and the whole lies before me, I think I can judge better and am less likely to make a rash step; and in fact I have found great advantage from this kind of equation, in what may be called moral or prudential algebra.”
Modern Franklin Pros and Cons
This updated Pros and Cons tool supports decision-making for a group of people. Use it as a proxy for Benjamin Franklin’s Pros and Cons method. His approach is better suited for an individual than a group of people. Especially with controversial issues, it is always helpful to consider multiple points of view.
Method for Modern Franklin Pros and Cons
To safely argue a controversial issue, carefully (and with advanced forethought about the options for either a homogeneous, heterogeneous, or hybrid blend of teams) separate your participants into three teams: Affirmative, Dismissive, and Observer. Give the affirmative and dismissive teams every fifteen minutes to develop their arguments, respectively supporting or refuting the issue. The observer team drafts criteria by which it may evaluate and assess the issue. Have the teams present their arguments to the observer team formally—as if it were a debate or court of law. Next . . .
- Affirmative and dismissive teams prepare for two-minute rebuttals to defend their positions.
- The observer team then describes the criteria they recommend using to help decide the issue, based on arguments presented by both affirmative and dismissive teams.
- Teams take another five minutes to revise their arguments based on observer criteria and the discussion sequence described above repeats.
- After round two, teams reform as one to discuss the issues. If the discussion reaches an impasse, switch members among different teams, carefully placing louder voices on the teams opposite of their apparent voice, so they are forced to represent the “other” side.
Do not intentionally polarize participants. Ensure that your teams comprise participants who hold a variety of views. As session leader (i.e., both facilitator and meeting designer), select the teams—do not allow the participants to choose. In most debates, the side one takes is not known until minutes before the debate, so that all debaters prepare to argue both sides of an issue.
Benefits for Modern Franklin Pros and Cons
The benefits realized include:
- Amplifies, expands, and stretches the issues, criteria, and perspectives.
- Allows the group to build an integrative view of all sides of the issue.
- Provides more robust and coherent arguments, issues, and criteria.
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In a world where everyone can engage in decisions that affect them
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Lead the Change—One Meeting at a Time
Are you ready to transform how decisions are made, problems are solved, and alignment is built in your organization?
True meeting leadership goes beyond setting an agenda. It requires a facilitator who can navigate complexity, balance voices, and drive toward outcomes with clarity and consensus. Our Professional Meeting Leadership Workshop and facilitation training equips you to do just that—blending human-centric methods with structured analytical tools to foster rigor, inclusivity, and results that stick.
- Practice live.
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Whether your meetings suffer from unclear objectives, disengaged participants, or decision fatigue, this workshop will help you identify the root causes, apply proven facilitation techniques, and emerge as the leader every team needs.
Take the first step today—transform your meetings and magnify your impact.
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Because every meeting should be a catalyst for change—not just another calendar event.
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With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we provide the following for your benefit and reference.
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Terrence Metz, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.
Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.
Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.
Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.
by Facilitation Expert | Jan 17, 2013 | Facilitation Skills, Meeting Support, Problem Solving
Facilitative leadership provides the best assurance that team leads/ project managers can overcome project pitfalls.
Borrowing from the PMBoK (i.e., Project Management Institute Body of Knowledge) and other published sources, the following are seven of the most common project pitfalls. Meeting leadership comments about each follow.
Using Facilitative Leadership
To Overcome Project Pitfalls
7 Project Pitfalls
- Abandonment of Planning
- Feature (Scope) Creep
- Omitting Necessary Tasks
- Overly Optimistic Schedule
- Suboptimal Requirements Definition
- Underestimating Testing
- Weak Team
Abandonment of Planning
Do not abandon your plan or the planning effort. No matter how proactive you are, some contributors will underperform, customers will request changes, and technical issues will prevent you from delivering some features on time. It’s not a question of “if” but “when”. As soon as you start to deviate from your plan, intelligently refactor, but stick to it. Never abandon your plan.
Feature (Scope) Creep
As time goes on, customers learn more about their needs and they come up with new features and ways of improving existing ones. Don’t let these changes throw your project plan out of control. Gather the feedback, analyze it, prioritize it, document it, and schedule the changes as mutually agreed upon. You’re not going to build the perfect product in one release. Deliver on your existing commitments, and try to facilitate a deeper understanding of many of the change requests. Omissions can be quite costly, so don’t immediately discount the value of understanding.
Omitting Necessary Tasks
A project schedule should not simply comprise the tasks required to develop product and process features. It should also include other derivative activities, such as interacting with customers, writing detailed functional specifications, and receiving technical training. Team-support activities cannot be skipped and therefore should not be ignored when baselining a project schedule.
Overly Optimistic Schedule
Meeting schedules should be aggressive, yet realistic. Demanding an overly optimistic schedule greatly reduces your chance of completing a project on time. Be aggressive with your plan, but remain realistic.
“Even particularly smart people in extremely high-performing situations will consistently underestimate how much time it takes to complete certain tasks.”—Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize
Suboptimal Requirements Definition
While showing illusionary progress, coding before requirements gathering actually delays project completion. Spending time early refining requirements can save weeks later on.
Underestimating Testing
Projects tend to underestimate how much effort is required to test a major release. As a rule of thumb, one-third of the entire project should be spent testing and fixing defects for major releases. A consensual understanding of test results and implications is key to stakeholder ownership.
Weak Team
Various resources claim that there is as much as a ten-to-one efficiency ratio between top performers and mediocre ones. Second-rate members contribute to project failures in many ways. They deliver late, do stuff that doesn’t support the project, and allow defects in their work that lack the level of quality deemed acceptable by you and other stakeholders. Select your team members carefully. At the end of the day, even the best project manager can’t succeed with a weak team.
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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.
Terrence Metz, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.
Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.
Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.
Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.
by Facilitation Expert | Jan 10, 2013 | Facilitation Skills
Here are 15 quick tips to help you become a more successful facilitative leader.
- “The wisdom of the crowd” effect has long been recognized, but scientists have gone further by showing that the strategy works even when the crowd consists of one person (Scientific American Mind, pg 14, Oct-Nov 2008).
Fun Facts
- Brain research on Buddhist monks seems to indicate that “HOW” you think, not “WHAT” you think about, improves brain activity (The Futurist, pg 36, Sep-Oct 2007).
- Decision-making is important because making a decision signifies the beginning of an activity, and the value of consensus derives from harmonized activities.
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Everest in Tibetan is Qomocangma (pronounced, CHO MOL UNG MA), and in Nepalese is Sagaratha.
- Extract more value from interactions: Companies have been automating or offshoring an increasing proportion of their production and manufacturing (transformational) activities and their clerical or simple rule-based (transactional) activities. As a result, a growing proportion of the labor force in developed economies engages primarily in work that involves negotiations and conversations, knowledge, judgment, and ad hoc collaboration—namely, tacit interactions.
- Facilitating through video or telepresence involves three considerations not found when facilitating audio-only meetings, namely:
a. Clothing; for example, stripes or patterned shirts are not recommended during a videoconference and may not display well at the remote site(s).
b. Plain-colored shirts and pants/skirts are optimal. Also, avoid wearing white and red.
c. Restrict movement as much as possible. Excessive movements are disruptive to viewers at the far site(s). Have a backup plan for your meeting or class in the event of connection failures or equipment problems.
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Howard Gardner (Harvard University) has introduced two more types of innate intelligence, bringing his documented total to nine:
a. Existential Intelligence—Sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence, such as the meaning of life, why we die, and how we get here.
b. Naturalist Intelligence (“Nature Smart”)
- Instead of de Bono’s Thinking Hats approach, consider assigning people or groups to emulate other famous people (e.g.; Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mahatma Gandhi, Michelle Obama, etc.) or collections (e.g.; ant colonies, weather, monastery, mafia, etc) and ask the group—“How would this person or collection address the problem at hand?”
- Marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of his seminal work on the theory of evolution, we are reminded NOT the strongest of the species survives, NOR the most intelligent; rather, “the one most responsive to change.”
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Note the irony: “I’ll see it when I can believe it.”
- Parsimony: The Golden Rule is only 11 words
- Research shows that innovation won’t happen without a diverse workforce. So, don’t clone yourself.
- The only qualification for innovation is having been five years old. On average, a five-year-old laughs 100 times per day while the 44-year-old laughs only eleven times per day.
- The original Palm Pilot had only four features: tasks, calendar, contacts, and memos.
- The single most powerful word in negotiations is “HUH?” It says, “Tell me more”, without offering rejection or objection.
______
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.
Terrence Metz, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.
Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.
Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.
Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.
by Facilitation Expert | Jan 3, 2013 | Problem Solving
Through more robust planning and preparation, the facilitator and methodologist can do much to amplify the brainstorming tool. Here are five activities to help you. The Harper-Collins book “Brainsteering: A Better Approach to Breakthrough Ideas” written by the brothers Kevin and Shawn Coyne reinforces these five, highly practical considerations to facilitate effective innovation sessions.
Brainsteering
Develop Optimal Questions
If the deliverable is the marketing plan, you cannot ask, “What is included in the marketing plan?” The question is so broad as to be meaningless. Break it down. Mathematically, “Y” is a function of multiple “X”s and there are big “X”s and little “x”s. Draft, shape, and sharpen your questions in advance of the meeting, and then share them with your participants. Some of the big “X”s of a marketing plan include segmentation, targeting, positioning, messaging, media, etc.
The Coyne brothers emphasize that loosely managed sessions are inferior to approaches that provide more structure. Remember as well to sequence your questions. The target audience, for example, should be identified before discussing the messages to send. As consultants, we discovered that providing clients with answers is not as valuable as helping them focus on the optimal questions.
Select a Variety of Participants
If you want the same old answers, then clone yourself. If you want something new, then stir up the pot. Invite roles normally excluded such as customers who have terminated our services, employees who departed for other opportunities, or simply a diversity of departments and roles within your organization. Breakthrough ideas are dependent on “stirring up the pot.” Arm them with the questions in advance.
Lock in Your Analysis Method
Once ideas have been generated, they must be analyzed and frequently prioritized. Prepare yourself in advance (see MGRUSH ‘s Definition and Simple Prioritization tools). Any known constraints such as eliminating ideas that require regulatory approval need to be identified in advance. Do not permit a wasted session where the highly prioritized ideas are denied because they fail to comply with some internal standard or governance issue.
Break into Sub Teams
Encourage high-energy, no-discussion break-out sessions to generate lots of ideas quickly. This gives quiet people permission to speak freely and invigorates a group rather than keeping them locked down in a traditional meeting. We agree with the Coyne brothers that sub-teams sized from three to five people each provide an excellent forum for conversation and opportunity for breakthroughs. Appoint a CEO for each team (chief easel officer) and have them report back to the group at large when your analysis begins. (see How to Manage Breakout Sessions).
Police Your Sub Teams
Make sure they stay on topic and focus on the precise question(s). Do not allow them to drift and analyze their ideas. Rather, enforce their responsibility to make their ideas clear so that they can present their ideas with confidence. Instruct them on building a separate list of ideas worth capturing that do not answer the question precisely. We do not want to lose any good input, but we do not want to over-invest by spending time on the answers to questions other than those we want them to focus on.
The Coyne brothers fail at this point to advance the hardest step within Brainstorming, the analysis. Not surprisingly, this is where most leaders, groups, and methods are frail. Analysis is a major priority of our focus and curriculum. Continue to fortify your skill set with tools and improvement suggestions available with the hot links above.
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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.
- Are we brainstorming the wrong way? (holykaw.alltop.com)
- Generate Great Ideas by Connecting with Customers (seomoz.org)
Terrence Metz, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.
Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.
Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.
Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.
