Tip:
Find someone neutral to facilitate your meeting if you’re deeply invested in the outcome. This will mitigate some of your biases impacting the direction of the conversations.
Details:
When leading a meeting, it can be difficult to balance managing the discussion and contributing meaningfully to the content. Furthermore, being in charge of process and content leaves the impression of favoritism. This is where a neutral facilitator adds real value. A facilitator is a content-neutral process advocate.
By taking on the role of guiding the process, he or she allows you and the other participants to focus fully on the substance of the conversation without being distracted by logistics or flow. Due to their impartiality they ensure that all viewpoints are heard. This creates a sense of fairness and builds trust, since participants can see that you as the meeting organizer do not dominate the conversation.
Ultimately, using a neutral facilitator can transform meetings into more inclusive, productive, and balanced discussions, ensuring that both the content and the participants receive the attention they deserve. However, it is not always obvious when such a facilitation approach would be necessary. A few indicators are:
- meeting style is collaborative and has the meeting is intended to come to agreements and make decisions
- meeting attendees have expressed different viewpoints on the topic or have clashing personalities
- meeting topic has conflict potential