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As coalition leaders, we can easily spend all of our time on meetings, projects, reports, plans, budgets and addressing other people’s needs that we rarely find any time to pause, reflect or rest. And we definitely do not have time to invest in ourselves. When we do invest in ourselves, we often focus on improving […]

In our coalition work and the rest of our lives, our culture supports constant productivity but doesn’t praise or support rest (or play). When we are constantly focused on checking one more thing off of our to-do list and not taking time to rest and pause, we will continue to live in a place of

You may have facilitated a fantastic online meeting where you engaged participants, made important decisions and made progress on your most important projects; however, the real test of a “good” meeting happens after the meeting is over. Once you have had a good meeting, it is critically important to follow-up as quickly as possible to

If we schedule every meeting for an hour and we fill up that time with conversation, we may never have a meaningful break and can easily experience meeting fatigue. In my experience, most of my colleagues and coalition members want to schedule one-hour meetings. While many meetings need to be an hour – or longer

As we continue to host online meetings, we have new opportunities to engage our participants utilizing both “old” and new “tools.” Not every tool is a good fit for every meeting. Considering the purpose and the participants, use these tools to maximize engagement and encourage participation. As someone who is a strong extrovert who is

As we facilitate online meetings, it can be difficult to engage our participants and keep them engaged (especially if it is a particularly long meeting!). One of the strategies that has helped participants stay engaged is to call on people directly – in a kind and encouraging way. It definitely takes courage as a facilitator

Do you remember large group conference calls? Do you remember that one participant putting the whole group on “hold” and music playing that couldn’t ever be silenced until that person came back onto the call?  I always felt terrible for the conference call host who was stuck and unable to do anything but try to

As a meeting facilitator for online meetings, one of the greatest challenges is being able to “see” one another. When our participants are mostly off camera, we miss the non-verbal cues that  help us know if we are engaging, connecting or being able to move forward together. Alternatively, when we can “see” one another, we

While I know that most of us have grown weary with online meetings right now (and are even beginning to have some in person!), depending upon your meeting purpose, they can still help us work together in similar ways to being in the same room. One of the aspects that helps the most with a

When we are in person, we often have “ground rules, guiding principles or working agreements” that help us set expectations for participation.  This concept is really important in online meetings as well. When we are really clear on our purpose and the need for our meeting, one of the next steps is to communicate how