Our Tips for Facilitating your Meetings
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Think about meeting duration in dollars instead of minutes
Use a Meeting Cost Clock to visualize that meetings are not free. Seeing the cost grow with each minute can create a sense of urgency and discourage distracting conversations.
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1,2,4,All – large groups can align quickly with this technique
Use the 1-2-4-All technique to quickly achieve alignment in large meetings. Based on the divide & conquer principle, alignment is created in steps starting with a group of two.
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Don’t facilitate if you’re too invested in the outcome
Find someone neutral to facilitate your meeting if you’re deeply invested in the outcome so that your biases don’t influence the flow of the conversation.
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The reason meetings are valuable is because people think differently
Create awareness for and encourage attendees to embrace different mental models. Disagreement can lead to better solutions.
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Watch out for experts before you lose the meeting
Use facilitation phrases and time-boxing to keep the meeting on track when expert discussions go too deep.