Interview participants to understand as much as possible about them, the people they work with, and their business.

To understand the political risks in meetings, speak with your participants. Preferably, sit with them one-on-one for about 30 minutes. Speak with each face-to-face, or at least by way of a teleconference.

Political Risks in Meetings — Interviewing Overview

Political Risks in Meetings — Interview Sequence

First meet the executive sponsor, the business partners, the project team, and then the participants. Keep your interviews around twenty to thirty minutes each. Conduct the interviews privately and assure participants that their responses will be kept CONFIDENTIAL. You want them to comfortably share the cultural dynamics, especially those who may not get along with each other. Because you will probably want to take notes, ASK FOR PERMISSION. It sends an incongruent signal to claim the conversation is confidential and then to take copious notes, so ask for permission. Only a few will say no. More will compliment you for the courtesy of asking.

Political Risks in Meetings — Interview Objectives  

Interview the participants to understand:

• To become familiar with their job, their business, and their expectations
• To confirm who should, or should not, attend and why
• How to help them show up better prepared to contribute
• To identify potential issues, hidden agendas, and other obstacles
• To identify scheduling conflicts and other concerns
• How to transfer ownership of the purpose, scope, and deliverables

Political Risks in Meetings — INTERVIEWING QUESTIONS

The following are well-sequenced questions that you should ask. Begin each interview by explaining your role and the purpose of the interview. Don’t forget to ask for permission to take notes. Use open-ended questions, sit back, and listen to the person—discover their value and value add to the initiative you are supporting.

Facilitator Style Questions

Political Risks in Meetings — Interviewing Questions

Participant Selection

Optimally you should choose the best participants. The business and technical partners along with the executive sponsor should approve the list. The method works like this:

• Ask the partners who should participate—make a list.
• Have your executive sponsor detail who should participate—adjust 
the list.
• Ask each participant who should participate—adjust the list.

When you have finished interviewing the participants, explain to the partners who you believe should participate and why. The partners will accept or modify the list. Once you both agree, have the partners get the executive sponsor to approve.

______

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.)

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.

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.