Many articles talk about getting meeting participants involved. Seriously? If the meeting output impacts participants’ quality of life, how much money they make, who works for them, etc., rest assured, they will add their point of view, if asked.
However, if the meeting output, frequently called a deliverable, does not affect them, they should not be attending.
Meeting participants should be engaged before they show up. If not, why are they attending? If their attendance is based on your mandate or a boss’s edict, then stop it. Your meeting has lost before it begins.
The point is when meeting participants are professionals, meaning paid employees who add value to an organization. Meetings are NOT simply an opportunity to speak up, meetings are an obligation to contribute as part of the implied contract of being a professional.
We are not talking about unstructured community discussions and volunteer settings we refer to them respectfully as Kum-bah-yah. Rather, we are talking about the vast majority of business meetings where the meeting output becomes input to help advance initiatives such as products, projects, departments, business units, and organizations.
Meeting Participants Called Subject Matter Experts [SMEs]
Professional meeting participants are made up of members from the business and technical communities who contribute their subject matter expertise, also known as content. Once they feel ‘safe’ to speak up and are engaged with clear and pertinent questions, they develop ideas and thoughts that are shared as content.
Do not let their ideas evaporate in the ether. Remind participants that the facilitator has an obligation to protect them from harm, and they have an obligation to share their thoughts and input. Also, frequently remind your meeting participants that their…
Professional meeting participant responsibilities include:
- Preparing and actively taking part.
- Representing the voice of their business needs and goals.
- Owning the results of meetings in which they participate, if they imply or suggest consensual agreement.
- Communicating meeting results to others, as appropriate.
Notice the underlying demand that you expect meeting participants to invest time before and after their meeting. This may be a big surprise for people accustomed to only showing up, going to the next meeting(s), and eventually going home until their next round of meetings ‘tomorrow.’
Why We Need Meeting Participants (Power of Plurality)
Plain and simple—decision quality. Nobody is smarter than everybody because groups of people can develop more ideas (options) than individuals on their own. Any person or group with more options at their disposal will statistically make higher-quality decisions. By leveraging one another, we are capable of breakthroughs and innovations not realized when working alone.
Professional meeting participant characteristics include:
- Arriving with a clear understanding of the meeting’s purpose, scope, and deliverables.
- Coming prepared, having read the pre-read BEFORE the meeting, not AT the meeting.
- Striving to be present and focused, and to not be a cause of distractions (e.g., texting).
- Preparing input and responses for the dialogue that concerns them most.
- Willing to listen during the meeting.
- Understanding that there is more than one right answer.
How You Can Help Your Meeting Participants Become Better Listeners
As the facilitator, help your meeting participants become better listeners. Dr. Ralph Nichols, “Father of the Field of Listening”, notes three behaviors that perfectly align with the role of facilitator. Begin to exhibit these behaviors yourself, and meeting participants will follow you, making them better listeners during meetings.
1. Anticipate
First, strive to anticipate the speaker’s next point. As they tend toward additional content, clarifying existing content, trying to understand the context, etc. As the facilitator, your anticipation helps shape your direction and participants will follow you. For example, should you be walking closer to the speaker to understand them or closer to the easel to write down their contributions? Meeting participants will take your cue and focus on the information being shared or the uncertainty that needs to be cleared up. If they anticipate correctly, their understanding has been reinforced. If they anticipate incorrectly, they wonder why, and the cognitive dissonance will further increase their attention and focus to understand why.
2. Identify
Another method to improve participants’ listening is to identify the supporting elements a speaker uses in building points. Here is the primary role of the facilitator, to help extract the most significant contributions. Next, ensure that you capture and record the supporting elements so that all the meeting participants can view the same information. Build understanding among all participants by challenging their thoughts, or as we say in the MGRUSH curriculum “Make Your Thinking Visible.” Participants, as speakers, rely on three actions to build their points:
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Characteristics of speakers
- They explain their point,
- May get emotional and harangue the point, or
- They illustrate the point with a factual example or illustration.
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Sophisticated listeners know that . . .
Attitudes are frequently subjective and specific to the speaker or contributor who “feels” a certain way. While other factors that motivate behavior include values and beliefs, sophisticated listeners hope to better understand what evidence, facts, examples, situations, or other objective information may have shaped the attitude or caused the feelings.
For example, we know that the preferred spice levels in foods we eat vary from person to person. When a certain threshold or pain level is exceeded, we might label that bowl of chili we’re eating as too spicy. However, someone sitting next to us, eating the same chili, might choose to add additional spice because they have a different threshold of pain or sensitivity to capsicum. Therefore, the level of capsicum measured by Scoville Units provides an objective basis for understanding the claim, “This chili is too spicy.” Consequently, participants increase their listening efficiency when they accept the ‘subjective’ point of view and seek an objective reason for it that everyone understands.
3. Reflect
A third way to improve the listening skills of your participants is to consistently reflect the points that have been recorded. Good listeners take advantage of short pauses to summarize and absorb what has been said. Periodic summaries reinforce absorption and understanding.
Listening is Hard Work
Most of us are poor listeners for a variety of reasons. We have had little training and few training opportunities exist (although the MGRUSH Professional Facilitation class is a significant exception). We think faster than others speak. Plus, listening is hard work and requires complete concentration. It is a challenge to be a good listener, but good listeners get big rewards.
Guard Against Selective Perception
Participants interpret and filter everything they hear in meetings and workshops. They hear or see differently based on their individual biases, or colored lenses. To illustrate how lenses operate, note the vastly different pictures below are all from the same area in space using different lenses including radio, infrared, visible light, x-ray, gamma ray, and others.
Varied Perspectives, One Reality
NASA Public Domain
Or consider the following where we discover the horizontal lines below are truly parallel and not askew. Some will claim that “no way” are the lines parallel, when in fact they are perfectly parallel.
Parallel Lines, or Not?
Look at the people in the picture below and understand that they are the same height, although appearances deceive.
Same Height, or Not?
Finally, A Meeting Participants’ Credo as an Obligation, Not an Opportunity
The closest thing to a silver bullet for making facilitators more effective is to get your meeting participants to show up prepared. To that extent, we offer you the following meeting participants’ credo. This credo, or a statement of the beliefs, aims to guide participants’ actions, has been modified from “The Ethics of the Management Profession” Harvard Business Review and is often reprinted as the “Hippocratic Oath for Meetings” by many business organizations around the world.
Meeting Credo:
As a participant, I serve . . .
. . . as society’s fiduciary for_______, an organization that brings people and resources together to create valued products and services. My purpose is to serve the public’s interest by enhancing the value my organization creates for society. Sustainable value arises when my organization produces economic, social, and environmental output. Output is measurably greater than the opportunity cost of all it consumes.
Ethically Responsible
In fulfilling my role. .
I Recognize . . .
. . . that any enterprise is at the nexus of different constituencies, whose interests can diverge. While balancing and reconciling various interests, I seek a course that enhances the value my organization can create for society over the long term. This may not always mean growing or preserving current ways and may include such painful actions as restructuring, discontinuation, or sale if these actions preserve or increase value.
I Pledge. . .
that considerations of personal benefit will never supersede the interests of the organization I am supporting. The pursuit of self-interest is the vital engine of a capitalist economy, but unbridled greed can be just as harmful. Therefore, I will guard against decisions and behavior that advance my narrow ambitions but harm the organization I represent and the societies it serves.
I Promise . . .
to understand and uphold, both in letter and spirit, the laws and contracts governing my conduct, that of my organization, and that of the societies in which it operates. My behavior will be an example of integrity, consistent with the values I publicly espouse. I will be equally vigilant in ensuring the integrity of others around me and bring to attention the actions of others that represent violations of this shared professional code.
I Vow . . .
to represent my organization’s performance accurately and transparently to relevant parties, ensuring that investors, consumers, and the public at large can make well-informed decisions. I aim to help people understand how decisions that affect them are made so that choices do not appear arbitrary or biased.
I Will Not Permit . . .
considerations of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, party politics, or social status to influence my choices. I will protect the interests of those who may not have power, but whose well-being depends on my decisions.
I Will Participate . . .
diligently, mindfully, and conscientiously by applying judgment based on the best knowledge available. I will consult colleagues and others who can help inform my judgment and will continually invest in staying abreast of the evolving knowledge in the field, always remaining open to innovation. I’ll do my utmost to develop myself and the next generation of participants so that our organization continues to grow and contribute to the well-being of society.
I Recognize . . .
that my stature and privileges as a professional stem from the honor and trust that the profession as a whole enjoys, and I accept my responsibility for embodying, protecting, and developing the standards of our profession, to enhance that respect and honor.
______
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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In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN
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.
