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Facilitation

How to Facilitate Agile Meetings That Help Your Team Thrive

➡️ Do your team meetings always go as planned?

➡️ Are you able to achieve the desired outcome?

➡️ Does your team leave meetings with a clear purpose and clarity in what needs to be done next?

If any of the answers are “no,” keep on reading. We have some tips and tools to help you!

In this article we lay the foundation for leading engaging and productive meetings with purpose, clarity and confidence so that you can support agility within your teams. 

The Role of a Facilitator

As facilitators we convene and we host. 

Our primary focus is to identify the desired outcomes and then create a space that fosters connection, authenticity, trust, in an environment of equal voice. 

A unique characteristic of facilitation is that when it’s done well you hardly know it’s happening.  Good facilitators make it look easy…like all you need to do is grab a marker and head to a flip chart or open up a Zoom line and people start collaborating. 

In reality there is a lot going on for a facilitator.  It takes formal training and practice! Just like playing the piano or flying a plane. Facilitation is a professional discipline that is both art and science. 

Mistakes To Avoid When Facilitating Agile Meetings 

Here are some common misconceptions and mistakes facilitators make when first starting out. 

  • Believing that you can just do facilitation after having seen others make it look so easy. 
  • Participating in the meeting rather than facilitating.
  • Cutting short the planning and design phase or not doing any planning at all. 
  • Seeking “agreement” from the group on decision-making.
  • Believing that your role in the meeting is helping the group reach a decision that has already been made. 

It takes time to learn how to properly facilitate meetings. It’s also important to practice the facilitation role throughout your journey by building competency! 

How to Facilitate Agile Meetings Like a Pro!

It wasn’t until many years into my facilitation journey that I learned how to: 

  • Really connect a group
  • Have greater awareness of my own beliefs about the group and understand what a profound impact my beliefs had on my ability to work with a group.
  • Let go of control; to turn it over to the group. 
  • Really listen to what people needed or were trying to say. 

These were profound shifts in my mindset that 

…allowed me to move from simply instructing people to write on sticky notes that overlooks the real issue.

…to leading meetings that got to the heart of what is blocking the team and support their journey beyond continuing in their same patterns. 

How to Facilitate Agile Meetings

Would you like to get started with leading engaging and productive meetings with purpose, clarity and confidence so that you can support agility within your teams? Here are 3 ways to do just that! 

  1. The mindset and practice of Being Neutral
  2. The key steps of Planning and Designing
  3. Decide how to decide

If you are ready for the full roadmap to facilitation, I highly recommend you read the book ‘The Art & Science of Facilitation’. 

5 Resources to Get You Started as a Facilitator

In a recent article, we laid out five resources to help you get started, or to continue your education as a facilitator.

These resources include a book, toolkit, website, self-assessment and workshops!

No matter where you are on your facilitation journey, there is room to continue your learning journey to competency! 

5 Great Resources to Get You Started as a Facilitator

The definition for the word facilitation comes up as “the action of facilitating something.”

To understand what it means to “facilitate” we need to go to this definition: :make (an action or process) easy or easier.”

A facilitator makes the process of team members working together, meeting together and making decisions together easier by being a communication guide and leader. 

Examples where facilitators can guide include:

  • Virtual meetings
  • In-person meeting
  • Hybrid meetings
  • In-person training
  • Virtual training
  • Project planning
  • Conflict Resolution
  • Project Management

Facilitation is a great, often first step in someone’s leadership journey. 

If you are ready to explore facilitation as a skill you want to master, or improve upon, read on as we are sharing five resources if you wish to become a skilled facilitator.

1. The Art & Science of Facilitation 

For anyone ready to lead with self-awareness and group insight, this book is designed to help you navigate group dynamics so that your team can work more efficiently and effectively in a truly collaborative environment.

Published in 2021, this book is your guide to moving your team further forward using the groundbreaking Five Guiding Principles of the Facilitation Stance. Whether you are new to the concept of facilitation or have experience leading meetings, this book is for you! 

You can learn more about this book or order a signed copy today! 

2. Facilitation Planning Toolkit

For those facilitators who want to uplevel their planning skills, TeamCatapult has put together The Facilitation Planning Toolkit, a resource to help plan out meetings. 

Included templates:

  • The Planning Canvas 
  • The Design Canvas for Meeting Agenda 
  • The Agenda Item Design Canvas
  • The Facilitator’s Guide

Having the toolkit from this free download is a great adjunct to the mindset we focus upon in all our workshops .

3. TeamCatapult Website and Blog

Another great resource we want to share with you, is our website and blog. 

You may have noticed that we recently updated our website. 

As a tool for you, as a guide for your leadership journey, we developed the Journey pages where, based on your role, and your level of competency, you’ll have quick access to the resources that will support your journey…or fuel a refresher that we often need.

Choose from Facilitator/Scrum Master, Agile Coaches, or Leaders/Executive paths and we drill down to 3 levels: 

  • Getting Started
  • Developing
  • Mastering

In addition, we have a robust collection of facilitation blogs we want to draw your attention to:

  • How to Create Purposeful, Intentional Space for Effective Team Collaboration
  • How to Reignite Your Team Meetings for Success
  • 3 Actionable Tips To Plan and Prepare For Your Next Team Meeting
  • The Five Cornerstones of the Agile Team Facilitation Stance Explained
  • 3 Great Ways to Maintain Neutrality in Meetings as the Facilitator
  • The Best Ways to Facilitate Collaborative Conversation With Your Team
  • How to Facilitate Meetings Like A Pro – and Get Results (Part 1)
  • How to Lead Engaging and Productive Meetings (Part 2)

4. Facilitator Self Assessment 

Next, we invite you to take the Facilitation Skills Self-Assessment!

Are you ready to support your team with powerful and effective facilitation skills?

Find out with the Art & Science of Facilitation Skills Self-Assessment – and start your journey to mastery today.

Start here.

5. Facilitation Workshops

Last but not least, we offer a variety of virtual workshops for those on their journey to facilitation mastery.

They are offered throughout the year, please take a look at the workshop calendar to find your preferred workshop and dates. 

Facilitation workshop offered include:

Agile Team Facilitation

Advanced Facilitation

Virtual Facilitation Masterclass

Your Leadership Journey Starts with Facilitation!

We invite you to learn more about facilitation by checking out any of the resources mentioned above.

We wish you all the best on your journey to becoming a master facilitator, feel free to contact us with any questions you might have about any of the resources! 

What Kind of Leader Do You Aspire to Become in 2022?

We are all leaders. We create the world we live in and are shaped by the world we live in. As we look back, and celebrate, the accomplishments of the agile movement over the past 20 years we will look through the lens of leadership.

What role have “individuals and interactions” played in developing agility? What will be required of us, as leaders of collaboration, into the future? 

I’ll share my story on the history of agile facilitation and coaching and encourage you to explore yours! Through sharing stories and exploring conversations you will craft your intention for leading into the future.

 What kind of leader do you want to be in 2022?

Your Words Are Magic, and They Matter

In the book The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz, he explains that you can use your words for white magic; to create good in the world, or as black magic; to create chaos and spread negativity.

I like to think of this as my energy or emotions when I speak. If I’m fearful, feeling bad, angry, or upset, I’m not in integrity with my true self and my words can disrupt and hurt. 

If I’m coming from a place of joy, love, abundance, feeling good and in alignment with what I value, then I’m coming from a place of white magic. 

Several years ago I was leading a coaching and facilitation cohort. I had just finished watching the movie ‘Divergent’ and there was something in the movie that spoke to me and it had me thinking about divergence in group processes and how we need it. I showed up to the group call and we did a check-in – this is our way of speaking into the space about how we are each arriving and a bit of intention setting – what we want to get out of the call. I was so focused on divergence that I checked in with that intention. Well, my one take away from that call was that my words matter. Never again would I freely tempt the energy of a group by stating things that I did not want to actually see happen. Everything diverged on that call. My technology stopped working, I was dropped from the call and a whole series of divergent thoughts emerged. 

If ever I doubted this notion of how words matter, that night cleared up any doubt I ever had. 

How We Think is How We Lead

I recently wrote in my new book, The Art and Science of Facilitation, that ‘How We Think is How We Lead’. 

Leaders are made, not born and we are all leaders – even my daughter as a five year old demonstrated leadership. Leadership is how we think and respond in the moment.

Aligning my values with my actions is the leadership work to do. And then being able to use my emotions as a guidance system that helps me know when I’m out of alignment with what I value. 

Doing this mindset work paves the path for greater self-awareness and is the doorway to the most fully creative, capable and competent version of myself. 

This is where I can truly be agile

The Principle of Intention

If words are magic and my mindset influences how I lead, then being clear about my intention seems important. 

In the book Seat of the Soul by Gary Zuchochf he talks about the power of intention. He says:

“Every action, thought, and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect. If we participate in the cause, it is not possible for us not to participate in the effect. In this most profound way we are held responsible for our every action, thought, and feeling, which is to say, for our every intention.”

It’s why as leaders, we are responsible for our intent and our impact. If you’ve ever given someone feedback and they have said in return “well that wasn’t my intent”: we can’t own just part of that equation, we have to own the whole thing. The intent and the impact – even if they are not the same. 

When I facilitate or coach a team – my first question to the team is always:

  • What do you want the outcome to be? 
  • How do you want to contribute to it?
  • Who do you want to be in the room if things go off the rails? 

In my private coaching practice, I am often asking leaders “Who do you want to be at this moment?” 

It’s this sense of intention that sets the energy for our interactions and energy is everything. 

Intention is Law

The third law of physics states that for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, if object A exerts a force on object B, then object B also exerts an equal and opposite force on object A.

Intention is everything.

The Agile Manifesto

The manifesto is a beautifully stated, simple intention. 

“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.”

Now the challenge with intention setting is that it’s just that. It says – we want to improve how this works and help others do it. 

The Challenge with Simplicity 

The challenge with simplicity, especially for us linear thinkers, is that we say “Yes! Yes, I want that!”

  • Collaborate
  • Trust others 
  • Respond to Change 
  • Self-Organize
  • Create the Environment
  • Conversation is the most effective way to communicate 

And then the next question is, but how? 

I went looking for the process, the step by step guide to how to make it happen. I even had the nickname ‘process chick’ – the one who creates the process for what we do.

My Agile Story

The manifesto resonated with me because by 2001 I was working with a team and we had been experimenting with Extreme Programming since 1999. And I was just starting to see something in ‘agile’ that was far beyond development practices. 

In 1994, 5 years earlier, I came to the world of professional facilitation – and it was the first time I had my eyes opened to the idea of group process. That there was a way to focus on the group

process so that the group could focus on their content and move the conversation along. I found these skills life changing – it forever changed my view of my own leadership and how I thought about my role in conversations. 

By 1999 I had been practicing facilitation for about 5 years and desperately wanted developers, project managers and graphic artists to see the power of facilitation. But back in those days we called them ‘soft skills’ and there was not much appetite for them. 

But what this agile manifesto was doing was introducing the notion of people and behaviors into the concept of development. 

Through the values and intentions set in the manifesto of individuals and interactions and collaboration – I saw agile paving the way for bridging this processes oriented side – of what we do -with the people and behavior side of ‘“How” we work together. 

It’s easy to say let’s collaborate but anyone who has been part of a collaboration that didn’t go well, will understand first hand that the human behavior side is the messy part. There is no playbook for that. 

Now, this was also the moment that I decided I wanted to be the one to teach others about the people side of the equation.

Agile Gratitude: Listening To All Voices

Little did I know at the time just how little I knew about myself and working with human interactions. My unconscious incompetence was high. As I have reflected on the past 20 years I am humbled today by just how little I knew then and possibly how much more I have to learn in the future. But I’m grateful for so many learnings along the way. I’m grateful for self awareness and having more command of my own behaviors in the moment. 

The agile movement has been one of my greatest teachers. 

It has made it okay to talk about humans and interactions with engineers and managers. 

I am grateful that today we talk freely and openly about collaboration. We don’t debate the need for the human side of this equation and there is value seen in the ability to bring both. 

It is this gratitude that leads to one of my first intentions, which is that I am the kind of leader who bridges the human being and the technical so that all voices are heard.

Humility

We need all three communication domains—Power, Affect, Meaning— and I’ve learned to bring more balance into my leadership range and also set a clear intention that speaking about feelings is crucial to our ability to be in conversation and relationship with one another. 

When organizations try to manage out any one of those communication domains it creates cultural traps and results in people feeling not heard. 

Just like there is no one model of agility – there is no one model of leadership. 

Agile Gratitude: Growing Leadership Range and Working with Difference

I have gratitude for finding range in my leadership. I have a deep appreciation that leadership can and does look different – and we need them all. Just because someone says it or does it differently does not make them less effective or impactful. It just makes them different. 

And gratitude for difference and the ability to work with difference. 

I am the kind of leader who brings range in my leadership so others can show up as their full selves too. 

Big Magic

In her book Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote something really profound. It was about ideas, and intention setting, and choosing what to say yes and no to. 

“I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual. Therefore, ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing human partners. When an idea thinks it has found somebody—say, you—who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit. 

The idea will try to wave you down but when it finally realizes that you’re oblivious to its message, it will move on to someone else. 

But sometimes – rarely, but magnificently – there comes a day when you’re open and relaxed to actually receive something. And you will start to notice all sorts of signs pointing you toward the idea. The idea will wake you up in the middle of the night and distract you from your daily work. “

~ Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

I don’t know about you but I’ve had many ideas visit me. I’ve said no to some. And I’ve also said yes to many.

Agile Gratitude: Collaborations

I’m grateful for collaborations and collective intelligence.

I’m grateful for lifelong friends and partnerships that have endured the test of time. 

I’m grateful for Collective intelligence. When you can look at something and say ‘we created that’ because it was through the conversation that new insights emerged and the final product could not be traced back to any one person – it emerged from the collective thinking.

I’m grateful for the world-wide impact that the track has had – far beyond what I ever thought might happen.

I’m grateful that we don’t generally have conversations in agility like  ‘what is facilitation’ or ‘what is coaching’ and why would I need to know how to do that when I work with development teams? 

We worried if we were setting the bar too high back then. We were not sure if people would find resonance or value in the learning guide we were creating. 

I am the kind of leader who grows other leaders and creates space for collective intelligence. 

How to Start a Movement

When your parent, aunt/uncle, or grandparent asks you ‘what is agile’? How do you answer them? I find it difficult to summarize a movement. 

Agile is…a movement

A movement is not about the leader or the first follower, it’s about the movement.  Agile isn’t owned by anyone. It’s had many lone nuts and first followers. It’s visible and collaborative and it requires leaders who have the courage to follow and nurture other followers.

The intention of the manifesto – was profound – to change the way we work. Change of that magnitude is messy. I had no idea the personal, inner growth that would be required of me in order to really lean into agile ways of working and leading

It’s not linear. It can’t be planned. 

It needs process, leadership, dynamics, tools, frameworks, books, new competencies, new ways of leading. And today agile is spanning boundaries

But what I’m grateful for is the durability of the movement. It’s been 20 years and it’s still relevant. We are still talking about it. Reflecting on it. And iterating. 

Although it took HBR until 2017 to give a formal acknowledgement that Agile was a relevant conversation to be having amongst the leadership team. Who could have imagined that 20 years later we would be talking about Business Agility, HR Agility, Finance, etc. 

Agile Gratitude: A Movement with Durability

I’m grateful that I find it difficult to summarize in one sentence to my parents what ‘agile’ is. It’s not easily definable today and for that i’m grateful. 

What if we can’t get it wrong?

The downside of a movement is that it cannot be confined or constrained. There are many that would argue we’ve lost our way. It’s too commercialized, productized, too soft and touchy, too esoteric, too much of an echo chamber, too tool driven, too polarized, too far from the roots of development, too focused on leadership, too big, etc. you get my point – and you might have your own that you would add. 

But what if we can’t get it wrong? 

What if the agile movement is exactly where it’s supposed to be? What if this is exactly what the movement needs to look like right now? 

See, if everything were perfect then the work would be done. But this is about continuous improvement. Every time we see something that you want to critique, what if we turn it around and ask ourselves:

What Am I Longing For?

In 1999, the predominant way to get a facilitator for your team was to hire a professional facilitator. As I looked around in 2011 I thought this is absolutely crazy. Why would we save the skills of facilitation and coaching for an outside consultant or coach?  

Not that you might never call on help from the outside. But day to day? We need everyone – agile coach, project manager, product owner, team members, engineers, executives – all to have the skill of leading collaborative conversations and change. 

I am longing for teams to have access to their collective intelligence. This longing and intention has informed much of what I have done since then. 

What if every time you have an impulse to criticize or point out what’s missing, that’s actually an idea circling you – trying to get your attention.

What if that is a moment of Big Magic calling you forward to make a decision, set an intention and be the first lone nut? 

Buckminster Fuller said: 

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

~ Buckminster Fuller 

The reality of agility is not something to fight. It’s something to embrace. We are where we are! The question is, where are we going? What is the intention that you will set for yourself? 

Making the Decision

Intention is everything. Setting an intention and making the clear decision to stick to it sets a whole world of possibility in motion.

William Murray said: 

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans. That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.”

Setting an intention is the most important work to do. 

I believe that we are all inherently working towards a greater purpose that we were put here on this earth for a greater reason. For some of us our greater calling can manifest in the way we are working and in the movement that we call ‘Agile’. 

If we’re all here working towards the same thing then let’s be intentional about how we do it! 

What Kind of Leader Do You Want to Be?

Set the intention, and claim it! Make the decision today. 

What will be required of us, as leaders of agility, into the future? How can you be in service to your team? To your customer? To the future of agility? Create from the moment. 

What’s your intention? 

Be in your own leadership. Be intentional about how you show up and engage with others. It matters and it makes a difference. When things get tough or feel overwhelming, change the narrative.

~ Marsha

How to Create Purposeful, Intentional Space for Effective Team Collaboration

In ‘3 Actionable Tips To Plan and Prepare For Your Next Team Meeting’ we touched on what it takes to plan and prepare for team meetings, whether these meetings are in-person, hybrid or virtual. 

Leading and facilitating team meetings takes planning and preparation: check out these 3 tips here.

Today’s topic touches on what it takes to create purposeful, intentional space for effective team collaboration, especially as it pertains to hybrid meetings. 

Challenges with Hybrid Meetings for Participants

For those team members who attend in-person, they:

  • Cannot see and/or hear everyone who is virtual
  • Get caught up in the conversation and forget to acknowledge those who are virtual
  • Are unaware of a separate conversation that emerges in the chat channel
  • Hold back, not wanting to have a better experience than virtual attendees

For those team members who attend virtually, they:

  • Do not feel included, seen, or heard in the conversation. This is the biggest challenge to a hybrid format because many behaviours can create the feeling of separation for those online like:
    • Multiple conversations that happen in the room
    • It being unclear who is speaking
    • The conversation in the room becomes animated but doesn’t online
    • Flip charts are being used and are difficult to see
    • Contributions have to be made through someone in the room, rather than directly from the person
    • Something funny happens in the room but online participants do not see it
  • Create a nested conversation using chat functions, and risk depriving the full group of the contributions and insights
  • Cannot see and/or hear who is speaking, what is being said, or what is written on the walls

Challenges with Hybrid Meetings for Facilitators

For facilitators there is:

  • Complexity. It’s a complex scenario to design and create space for multiple people who will have different experiences that they can see and/or hear, making collaboration difficult, if not impossible.
  • High Cognitive Load. Facilitating in-person meetings already comes with a high degree of complexity and many things to pay attention to. Fully virtual adds a layer of technology and helps people move around the virtual space. Hybrid brings the complexity of both the physical space and virtual space. 

5 Key Principles for Hybrid Planning and Meeting Design

Here are the 5 principles needed to plan and design a successful hybrid meeting.

1. Establish ground rules specifically for hybrid meetings

As the facilitator, you will have some specific requests for participants in order to make the session the most effective. Be sure to share these, along with other logistics and joining information, with participants ahead of time

  • One camera, one mic, one mouse per person
  • Be on camera
  • Be off mute
  • Be prepared to be called on

2. Level the playing field

Those in the room will have more power than those online. Your design should find ways to level the playing field so that everyone can be seen, heard and can contribute equally. 

  • Establish your ground rules
  • Assume that remote participants are not seeing and hearing what is being said and shown in the room and check in on their experience.
  • Use small groups with a trained facilitator to increase the quality of the conversations and help the group stay focused and on task.
  • An alternative to each participant being on a laptop, remote participants could join via tablet and have a buddy in the room. 

NOTE: While hybrid experiences may be necessary and it’s important to make them as great as possible for everyone, consider making everyone remote as the ultimate way to level the playing field.

3 Allow for extra planning and design time

Planning a hybrid meeting will require more time.

General planning and design time guidance are as follows:

  •   In-Person  – 2 x the length of  the meeting
  •   Virtual – 2.5 x times the length of the meeting
  •   Hybrid – 2.5 – 3 x times the length of the meeting.

Factors to include –  technology setup, designing pre-work, envisioning transitions, ensuring EVERYONE can see and hear the same thing. If you are bringing in more facilitators to lead smaller groups, you will need to do some pre-work with them as well.

4 Prioritize the collective conversation

The collective, sense-making conversation is the most important part of any collaborative meeting. Facilitation tools and methods are doorways to different kinds of conversation. They are not meant to be the activity in order to reach a decision; they are meant to give people new and different insights or ways of thinking. 

In any meeting, but especially in hybrid, prioritize the collective conversation over the gathering of data or ideas. Use pre-work or design asynchronous work for the session to gather data or do detailed work that is better suited to one or two people (i.e. wordsmithing a mission statement, estimating the workload, researching facts or data).

Do not waste people’s time. Think about the purpose and desired outcome for the meeting and the type of interaction desired. Prioritize conversations and minimize detailed work in a large group.

  • Carefully consider the conversations needed and think about ways to accomplish them asynchronously prior to the meeting rather than during the meeting.
  • One of the pros of meeting online is that you can design breaks and space for individual work and then bring the group back together at a later time.

5 Change the frame

Create your design so that you vary the frame being used (individual,  small group, large group, written, verbal, drawing, etc.). If you start in a large group then move to a small-group activity and then back to a large group. This shifts the energy in the group and will help people stay engaged. It also helps to level the playing field and give people different ways to get their voice in.

Use small groups to give people time to connect with others and deepen the conversation. Think about how you will divide people up to create varied perspectives in the breakouts. It will be technically easier to pair people in the room with others who are also in the room, and vice-versa for online. But mixing in-person and online in small groups can also be a great way to break down barriers of ‘us vs them’ between participants.

  • High-tech idea: Use a meeting platform like Zoom and have everyone join using their own device. Use the breakout room features.
  • High-tech idea: Have an iPad for each Virtual participant and assign them a ‘buddy’ in the room. The buddy will be responsible for bringing them along to small group breakouts happening in the room. (Be sure to rotate the ’buddy’ role to new people so one person does not become stuck in that role.)
  • Low-tech idea: Ask participants to exchange phone numbers and call one other having a voice-only conversation. Agree on where and how the outcomes of the conversation will be captured and shared with the group.

10 Key Principles for Hybrid Conduct

Last but not least, we want to leave you with 10 key principles for hybrid conduct. 

  1. Help participants ‘see each other
    1. High-tech idea: Send out a circle ahead of the meeting with everyone’s name and picture.
    2. Low—tech idea: At the start of the meeting ask everyone to take a sheet of paper and build their own virtual circle at the start.
  2. Connections before Content
    1. Building connection is one component of fostering trust and creating a space where people feel like they can fully bring their voice into a conversation. 
    2. Start with a check-in that allows people to share something personal about themselves.
  3. Call on People
    1. Ask a question: What ideas do you have for the future?
    2. Say someone’s name: Cindy, would you like to share?
    3. Repeat the question: Cindy, what ideas do you have for the future?
  4. “Nomination” or “Pass the Mic”
    1. In this adaptation, prompt the group to who would like to speak first. Then ask the group to pick the next speaker. 
    2. Share with the group the technique of saying someone’s name and then repeating the question.
  5. Have Two Co-Facilitators
  6. Have a Remote Liaison
    1. This person‘s role is threefold:  
      1. to make sure that  technology does not impede collaboration 
      2. support the facilitators and participants 
      3. navigate technology to ensure that everyone can see and hear the same things and contribute equally to what’s being created.
  7. Ask Participants to be Facilitators
    1. If you are using small group breakouts,  ask for one person in each group to step into the role of facilitator.  
    2. Ask them to be mindful of hearing all voices and not overly driving the conversation. This person should also take responsibility for bringing  the themes and summary of the small group conversation back into the large group.
  8. Hear and Be Heard. See and Be Seen
    1. Design a working agreement with the group and ask them if at any point they do not feel like this is happening, to say so. This includes asking questions if they are not sure what they are supposed to be doing or seeing at the moment. 
    2. As the facilitator you will need to rely on the group to speak up if something does not seem right.
  9. Be Clear and Direct with your Instruction 
    1. Chunk up your instructions, don’t tell them everything all at once
    2. Be specific with what  the task is
    3. Be clear about where and how they should be contributing
    4. Adjust  your instructions for multiple experiences (this will be the challenging  part)
    5.  It will be easy for people to become lost, or confused because they are looking at something different than you are. Always ask “Is there anyone who is not with me?”  or “Is there anyone who is seeing something different?”
  10. Use Virtual Collaboration Whiteboards
    1. Use a virtual whiteboard or collaboration tool (i.e. Lucidspark, Miro, Mural, etc) that allows everyone to see and contribute to the work being created.

What comes next?

Once you’ve planned for a team meeting and have taken all the steps necessary to create a space for effective team collaboration, you need to ‘read the room’. 

Interested in learning more about facilitation?

Read ‘The Art and Science of Facilitation’

TeamCatapult offers several workshops:

Agile Team Facilitation 

Advanced Facilitation

Virtual Facilitation Masterclass

We invite you to reach out to us via concierge@teamcatapult.com if you have any questions about our workshops!

How Daring to Dialogue Improves Performance and Create a Culture of Agility

How Daring to Dialogue Improves Performance and Creates a Culture of Agility

A keynote presented at AGILE AND SCRUM 2021 Online Conference #agilecon2021

Enjoy!

~Marsha

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