Three Components
Just as the life-cycle of a meeting or workshop has three steps (ie, Get Ready, Do It, and Review), we find that within each meeting, three components need to be carefully managed to ensure success. All agendas should include a beginning, a middle, and an end. Many meetings fail because they neglect to include all three components. Even a lousy book or movie includes a beginning, a middle, and an end.
The Beginning
Planning Predictable Results
Manage (and rehearse) your introductions carefully. You want to make sure that your participants feel that their meeting has clear purpose and impact. Remember, to use the integrative and plural first person of ‘we’ or ‘us’ and avoid the singular ‘I’ so that you can begin to transfer responsibility and ownership to the participants since they own the results.
Have your room set-up to visually display the purpose, scope, and deliverable of any workshop. If you cannot convert these three guiding principles into 50 words or less (for each), then you are not ready yet to launch the workshop. Let us repeat, if you do not know what the deliverable looks like, then you do not know what success looks like.
Consider displaying the purpose, scope, and deliverable on large Post-It® paper, along with a set of ground rules appropriate to your politics and situation. The following sequence is typically optimal for a robust introduction.
- Introduce yourself and explain the importance of the meeting, how much money or time is at risk if the meeting fails. Try to avoid using the word “I” after this moment. It is tough to drop the ego, but at least be conscious whenever you do use the first person singular.
- Present the purpose, scope, and deliverable and seek assent. Make sure that all the participants can live with them. If they can’t, you probably have the wrong agenda prepared since it is designed specifically for your deliverable.
- Cover any of the administrivia to clear participants’ heads from thinking about themselves, especially their own creature comforts. Explain how to locate the lavatories, fire extinguishers, emergency exits, and other stuff particular to your group and situation.
- Cover the agenda and carefully explain the reason behind the sequence of the agenda steps, and how they relate to each other. Relate all of the agenda steps back to the deliverable so that participants can envision how completing each agenda step feeds content into the deliverable, thus showing progress for their efforts as they get closer to completing the meeting.
- Share some (not more than eight to twelve) ground rules. Consider supplementing your narrative posting of ground rules with some audio-visual support, including some humorous clips, but keep it brief and appropriate. See your FAST alumni site for some wonderful downloads.
- For a kick-off, have the executive sponsor explain the importance of the participants’ contributions and what management hopes to accomplish. For on-going workshops, consider a project update but do not allow the update or executive sponsor to take more than five minutes. Your meeting is not a mini-Town Hall meeting (unless it actually is).
- NOTE: For multiple day workshops, remember to cover the same items at the start of subsequent days (except executive sponsor or project team update). Additionally, review content that was built or agreed upon the day(s) before and how it relates to progress made in the agenda.
The Middle
The agenda steps between the Introduction and Wrap comprise the middle steps. Most of our other blogs are focused on what you can do between the introduction and wrap to help a group build, decide, and prioritize. We also provide a separate blog that deals exclusively with a robust approach to the Wrap-up. See How to Manage the Parking Lot and Wrap-up Meetings for HOW TO manage the end of a meting or workshop.
Let us know what you think by commenting below. For additional methodology and team-based meeting support for your change initiatives, refer to “Change or Die, a Business Process Improvement Manual” for much of the support you might need to lead more effective groups, teams, and meetings.
Become Part of the Solution—Improve Your Facilitation and Methodology Skills
The FAST curriculum on Professional Facilitation Skills details the responsibilities and dynamics of an effective facilitator and methodologist. Remember, nobody is smarter than everybody, so consult your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership-training workshop offered around the world (see MG Rush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI, CDUs from IIBA, or CEUs).
Do not forget to order Change or Die if you’re working on a business process improvement project. It provides detailed workshop agendas and numerous tools to make your role easier and your team’s performance a lot more effective—daring you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader.
Related articles
- How to Communicate Meeting and Workshop Results (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
- How to Manage the Parking Lot and Wrap-up Meetings (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
- How to Get a Promising Meeting to Fail (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
- Five Ways to Facilitate Quiet People and Get Them to Participate More Fully (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
- The Role of Session Leader (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
Filed under: Meeting Controls, Methodology, Technique Tagged: Agenda (meeting), Business, CHOICE, Deliverable, Education and Training, facilitation, Facilitative Leadership, Facilitator, Facilitator Training, FAST, FAST Facilitator Training, Fundamentals, Ground rules, Harvard Business School, Holarchy, International Institute of Business Analysis, Leadership, Leadership Training, Management, meetings, MG Rush, MG Rush Performance Learning, Morgan Madison, PMI, Post-it note, Professional Facilitation, Project management, Project Management Institute, Project team, Structured Facilitation, Structured Meetings, Town hall meeting, Trivium, Workshop, Workshops
