The effective facilitator helps meeting participants become better listeners. Dr. Ralph Nichols, “Father of the Field of Listening”, notes three behaviors that perfectly align with the roles of facilitator, and your hope to be more effective, that create better listeners during meetings.
First of all, anticipate the speaker’s next point .
As a facilitator, your anticipation helps shape your direction. For example, should you walk closer to the speaker or to the easel to capture their comments? Therefore, if you anticipate correctly, learning has been reinforced. If you anticipate incorrectly, participants wonder why, causing unnecessary noise.
Another is to identify the supporting elements a speaker uses in building points.
The primary role of the facilitator is to make it easy to extract the participants’ points of view. Then, ensure that the supporting reasons are captured and recorded, preferably on an easel, screen, or whiteboard so that all the meeting participants can view the same information.
Build understanding among your participants by seeking the reasons and evidence supporting their thoughts. Or, as we say in the MGRUSH curriculum, “Make Your Thinking Visible.” Typically speakers rely on three methods to convince others:
Better Listening
- They explain the point,
- Speakers get emotional and harangue the point, or
- They illustrate the point with a factual illustration.
A sophisticated listener knows this.
He or she spends a little time identifying the difference between thought speed and speaking speed to identify the evidence being used to support any claims. Consequently, listening behavior becomes highly profitable if measured by communication efficiency.
A third way that improves the listening skills of your participants make summaries of the main evidence and examples. Good listeners take advantage of short pauses to summarize and absorb support for participants’ claims. Periodic summaries reinforce learning tremendously.
Most of us listen poorly for a variety of reasons. First, we have not been trained and few training opportunities exist (although the MGRUSH Professional Facilitative Leadership workshop offers a significant exception). We think faster than others speak. Plus, listening represents hard work and requires complete concentration. While it remains a challenge to be a good listener, good listeners get big rewards.
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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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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.
