When we facilitate an in-person meeting, most folks expect to have some kind of on-site support. Someone will help with registration, take notes, there might be an IT person to troubleshoot technology challenges and you may even have additional facilitators. When you facilitate an online meeting, sometimes folks make the mistake of trying to do […]
Garner support from your team Read More »
Now that we are all leading, hosting and participating in online meetings, there are a lot of “tips” and recommendations from many different places. As someone who has been hosting online meetings for more than six years before it was the only way to host a meeting, I wanted to share with you my Top
Top 10 Tips for Facilitating an Online meeting Read More »
One of my favorite things to do is facilitate a small or large group meeting. I know it may sound completely crazy to some, but I am totally energized by active discussions and participations, “aha” moments and seeing a group move to collective action and a plan forward. While these skills are also important in
Facilitating Online Meetings: How are they different? Read More »
You can have an effective meeting that has a defined purpose, the right people and the right schedule; however, if you do not follow-up, the meeting loses its overall effectiveness. We often put so much effort in planning and leading our meetings that we can become weary when it comes to follow-up. You may be
Effective Meetings: Follow-up Read More »
How often do you meet? Do you meet in person or virtually? How do you know? One of the most challenging aspects related to leading partnerships and coalitions is determining an appropriate meeting schedule. You want to keep your members engaged and working together well. You don’t want to overburden yourself or your members by
Effective Meetings: The Schedule Read More »
As coalition leaders, we can become concerned that we are leaving people out and have a tendency to want to invite everyone to every meeting. While this may be important if the primary purpose of your meeting is networking and coordination, this can be really challenging if the purpose is more narrowly defined. How do
Effective meetings: The People Read More »
We have spent the last 15 weeks on facilitation and are transitioning for the next four weeks to “effective meetings”. Facilitation and effective meetings are very linked. As a matter of fact, in order to have an effective meeting, you must have effective facilitation. However, facilitation alone will not make your meeting effective. This week
Effective meetings: The purpose Read More »
As I mentioned last week, every group has dominators and quiet voices. As important as it is to pull out quiet voices, it’s also very important to address the dominators with grace. They are dominators for a reason. They may be particularly passionate about a topic, highly extroverted, very engaged and wanting to contribute or
Facilitation: Addressing dominators with grace Read More »
Every group has dominators as well quiet voices, and as a facilitator, it is important for you to find ways to pull out quiet voices. This isn’t always easy! There may be power dynamics (position, gender, race, education and more), new members who aren’t yet comfortable sharing their perspective, introverted members who would rather not
Facilitation: Pulling out quiet voices Read More »
If you have been meeting with one of your teams, workgroups or committees for a while, there is a good chance the group has become weary and may also be experiencing burnout. This can be true even if you have had some great successes as a group! If you are having lower attendance than usual,
Facilitation: Group that is weary and experiencing burnout Read More »