I experimented with a new tool last month. I facilitated two different full-day meetings where I had limited contact with the meeting sponsor or chief client prior to the meeting, and was concerned that I didn't know what facilitation approach they wanted. I called this tool the "Facilitator Control Panel". The key benefits of this tool include:
* Making the facilitator's assumptions about how the meeting should be facilitated explicit and visible to participants * Allowing participants a voice in what tone and approach the facilitator should employ. * Allowing the facilitator to be intentional and informed, rather than reactive and assumptive, in how they facilitate. A picture: For the first meeting, I drew the first two parameters this on the whiteboard, and then spent a few minutes talking to the meeting participants about it. The key points included: * This meeting is for the benefit of the participants * The facilitator's job is to modify how the meeting would organically function to make it better serve the participants * Therefore the participants should have some voice in the overall tone and goal of the facilitator(s). * One very common problem for facilitators is, should I help this (temporary, expensively gathered) group use their time to completely address one topic, or to make sure that all topics get an equal hearing, which usually means limiting discussion on one or more topics. This is shown via the Thorough vs Fast slider. * Another parameter I offered was, should I as facilitator try to make the meeting run smoothly, interrupting arguments between participants, or should the facilitator encourage (constructive, polite) argument, and test apparent agreement to try and uncover premature or incomplete agreement? The names of the first two settings were modified upon suggestion by the group. The last two settings were, I believe, suggestions from the group, and functioned as humor. At the risk of over-thinking: As a facilitator, this gave me an extra means by which to inject humor into the group at appropriate moments without being especially forced, without having to try and think of something novel and funny (thanks to the magic of running jokes), and with a light touch that reduced the risk of subjecting participants to painfully strained and lengthy "jokes". The "settings" the group chose reflected their composition and the purpose of the meeting; I could imagine other groups choosing very different settings. We updated the joke settings several times during the day, referenced the serious settings once or twice, and did not otherwise interact with the control panel after the initial discussion. In retrospectives and an after-action survey, it was mentioned three times: two participants listed the tool as a positive, and one reported that it wasn't "particularly useful". For the second meeting, I did not write out the settings and this tool was completely conceptual. I talked to the client prior to the meeting and used the settings to help the client understand what was possible and to express what they wanted on behalf of the meeting participants, which they did. I explained the settings to the participants in brief during the (two-day) meeting. Some participants did use some of this language and framing to raise related issues during the meeting. There was no structured review of its value. Overall I found this to tool be beneficial as a facilitator; probably a net positive for participants; very simple and quick to implement; and low-risk. I will probably use it again, both as an explicit tool and as something to discuss with clients prior to meetings. I don't think the labels are very clear or that the axes they define are ideal, and hope to improve them. *-- Joel Aufrecht *(they/them) Program Manager (Technology) Wikimedia Foundation
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