Facilitation begins the moment anyone enters the meeting. You can read the [The Skilled Faciliator](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119176572) if you want to go deep on helping groups realize their creative and problem-solving potential. ## Opening Promote a sense of presence among the attendees, and make them feel welcome: 1. Greet people at the door. 2. Express gratitude for their time. 3. Offer snacks, drinks, or play music. 4. Ask people to turn off phones, tablets, and laptops. 5. Do not delay for late-comers, no matter how VIP (repeat parts if necessary, rather than delay). 6. Possibly: Agree who the facilitator is. 7. Start with an opening statement that explains 1. **why each person is in the meeting and** 2. **what the/your objective for the meeting is**. 8. Explain any meeting values, such as not interrupting others, keeping comments succinct, not going off-topic, etc. 9. Periodically (i.e., not in every meeting) remind the participants that your goal is that everybody can and will participate. 10. If applicable: Ask attendees to (re-)read the written proposal silently, to increase its understanding & retention, and thus the participants' engagement with it. ## Conversation If you are the facilitator, you should be a servant leader in a supportive role, not the main speaker. The conversation should be a genuine give-and-take, all attendees should feel safe speaking up, and they should leave committed to the outcomes. General structure: 1. Ask everyone to share relevant background information, including your own. 2. Explain your own interests and needs for this meeting, and explore others' interests. 3. Test your assumptions and be curious about what inferences others might have been making. 4. Discuss solutions, find agreements, and identify next steps. #### The basics 1. Adapt a stewardship mindset. 1. Psychological safety means a felt permission for candor - people feel free to ask the question, make the comment - and for taking time to think (in silence). 2. Prefer to ask stimulating questions over making statements of your own. 3. Don’t hold back, or talk last 4. Be prepared to manage the interactions, emotions, and any conflict. 5. Practice active listening (pay attention, show interest, provide feedback, defer judgment, respond appropriately). #### Go broad before going deep 1. Find out briefly what every participant thinks about a topic before learning in depth about any participant’s views. 1. Ask everyone to briefly state what they think, and thereby get everyone engaged. 2. Prefer collecting initial thoughts rather than drilling into a specific statement anyone made, so that everyone understands each other’s views. 3. Ensure equitable "on-air" time among participants. 4. Engage persons that have not yet participated. 1. Ask quieter participant to contribute thoughts on a topic. 2. Let attendees that have not yet spoken (much) lead a particular agenda item. 5. Manage participants that like to dominate a meeting through body language: 1. Shift your (= the facilitators) gaze away. 2. Turn them you shoulder and look at others to solicit their reactions. #### Managing conflict 1. Draw out concerns from attendees. 1. Actively surface concerns you might have gathered before the meeting. 2. Collaboratively work to identify the sources of disagreement: Is it based on different information, different needs, or different assumptions? 3. Appoint someone to be devil's advocate to push for robust, in-depth conversations. 4. Separate the discussion/evaluation of an issue from the decision making on it, to ensure the debate isn't hampered by having to make a choice on the spot. 5. Resolve unproductive conflict immediately, and pause or even defer the meeting if you cannot ("reduce the difficulty level"). 6. When someone complains about someone else or another group, ask if the two sides already talked about the issue directly. 1. As facilitator it is not your job to resolve the problem between the two sides; Your role is to help them work out those issues and teach them how to resolve their issues without your presence. 2. If you unilaterally only speak to one side of a conflict at a time, you are only waisting time, and will almost certainly lack critical information to craft a solution that works for everyone. 3. Teams who resolve conflicts directly instead through a formal leader learn to be accountable to each other instead of only being accountable to the leader. 4. If not all discussion participants are involved in the conflict, you should ask them to create a separate space for that discussion - and, if needed, postpone the current meeting until that conflict has been resolved. #### Manage the discussion 1. Inject and encourage exciting, emotional, or unexpected commentary to increase engagement. 2. Gauge interest in an agenda item or discussion (e.g., via show of hands or anonymous survey). 3. Allow for periods of silence to prevent groupthink and increase psychological safety. - This lets people think without having to hear thoughts voiced by others. - Permit people to think by letting the group wait in silence for an answer. 4. Reinforce positive dynamics with comments like "I'm loving this discussion" or "I really appreciate everyone's engagement". 5. Prefer brainwriting over brainstorming - Reflecting quietly on ideas and writing them down before sharing them out load yields more creative thinking and ensures more voices get heard (vs. regular brainstorming). - Ask the participants to write (all) their ideas down before (then) sharing them (each). - Full [brainwriting](https://www.mindtools.com/ak3qj17/brainwriting) means passing on the paper with the written ideas (several times) before gathering the papers and sharing the outcome. ## Closing 1. Manage progress and aim to finish on time. 2. Ensure all relevant action items (who, what, why, and when) are known to their owners. 3. Any decisions should be recorded, together with their why. 4. Possibly drop meeting transcripts into a LLM and extract meeting summaries.