Meeting Facilitation Training: Tips And Tricks

By Author: SamJacob Thomas
Total Articles: 40
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If you wish to keep your long draw corporate meeting, whether internal or with clients, then it’s best to have a facilitator. While these meets may be carried on without an effective person guiding it, it may not be the same. The perils of meeting without a facilitator are many, and often lead to a high level of frustration among participants.

If you find that your employees or meeting participants are often drifting from agenda, lack the luster to brainstorm or the meetings go on unnecessarily for a long time, then you must have a facilitator. There are two ways of doing this, using internal facilitators and hiring outside professionals.

The first question would be, why hire external help when you may internally delegate this job? The answer for this would totally depend on the kind of meeting and staff in your organization. For groups that meet regularly – project teams, staff groups, task forces, etc. may consider former that is, meeting facilitation training for their employees. External aid may be needed ...
... for meetings that have higher stakes. These may include retreats, idea generation sessions, strategic planning and problem-solving meetings.

It is essential that the facilitator you pick has a certain set of skills, whether you decide to develop them internally or utilize outside consultants or facilitators.

• Equipped with the knowledge of de Bono's thinking hats, this person should know the dynamics of group process and also use these techniques for making everyone task-focused, encouraging creative thinking, building consensus and keeping all group members involved. Along with this, an essential skill is to maintain a safe, open and supportive environment for all group members.

• While being able to understand the group is essential, being balanced is also equally important. Skilled facilitators should never advocate a point of view, regardless of their expertise and opinions on a given subject.

• This person should also know other techniques listed by Edward de Bono, which are listening and observation skills, in terms of watching for nuance, content, body language and other feedback.

• Lastly, the finest facilitators should have tact as well as positivity combined with humor and discipline. This helps keep everyone involved on track without offending anyone.

The best part about having these amazing professionals on board, whether internal or external is that it helps change the face of your corporate meetings. These individuals aid in making you focused, increasing productivity while managing people.