Meeting Facilitation

Tips for Meeting Facilitation

• Begin the meeting on time!
• Identify a facilitator, note-taker, time-keeper and stack-taker for the meeting. Request a co-facilitator if desired.
• Facilitator explains community agreements for meetings:
  • Time limits for meeting and agenda items
  • Tools for communication including hand signals and an explanation of stack
  • Explanation of the decision-making process
  • Time limits on individual comments
  • No personal attacks or interruptions
• Start the meeting with a introductory go-round and icebreaker
• Identify one thing that went well and one challenge from the week.
• Compile an agenda and sort agenda items in order of priority.
• Allow time for discussion of each agenda item; with the consent of the group determine whether:
  • More time should be allotted for discussion
  • A vote can be taken
  • Item should be tabled for future discussion / additional deliberation
• At the one hour mark, check in to see if the group needs to take a break.

If you run into trouble, here are some things that may be helpful to consider:

• Ask questions to initiate discussion, as opposed to jumping directly into concerns.
• When people are voicing concerns, ask them what can be done to meet their concern.
• Listen for agreement and note it, no matter how small. This both builds moral and helps clarify where the group is at.
• Reflect back what you're hearing. Practice synthesizing and summarizing.
• Break big decisions into smaller pieces.

8* Don't allow back and forths between two participants to dominate a discussion or agenda item: ask for input from others.

[credit: Thanks to Aorta Collective http://aortacollective.org/ from whom we poached several of these ideas! ]