Meeting Leadership and Facilitation
Make it your mission to run the best meetings you possibly can and the best ones in the company!
The leader needs to provide structure and keep everything on track as well as making sure that the preparations and planning are airtight. But this doesn’t mean reverting back to being stern and intimidating.
Just like any mode of entertainment, the first few minutes really set the tone.
Good ways to start a meeting are with an interesting quote or news article or an amusing anecdote about a former success that you and another team had; think of something that is relevant to what will be discussed in the meeting that you can use to lead into it.
Try engaging the group in an ‘ice-breaker’ activity where they can have fun, loosen up and familiarise themselves with each other. Get them to find out facts about each other and relate them to the group or express how they are feeling with a word or a drawing.
Here is a list of personal qualities and attributes as well as some basic facilitation skills and techniques that help towards being an effective meeting host.
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Excellent communication skills
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First-class organisational ability
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Punctuality and time management
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Precise attention to detail
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Conflict management skills
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A talent for problem-solving
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Group management techniques
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Flexibility and adaptability
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Decisiveness
Be personable, approachable and charismatic; often this is best achieved by just being yourself. If you are well-liked by the group, they will be a much more co-operative audience as well as a more productive team.
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Now that you’ve got everybody on board, you have to make sure that they stay there...
Better Meetings
4 useful techniques for refocusing the group
If things start drifting off topic:
Quick break
A 5-10 minute break can help to re-focus and re-energise people while preventing
fatigue.
Group activity
Get them to find out facts about each other and relate them to the group.
Use of music
"Nothing activates the brain so extensively as music"
– Oliver Sacks, M.D; neurologist
Types of Meeting
Meetings range from the formal to the informal; the structured to the ad-hoc....
Planning a Meeting
There’s a lot more to a business meeting than just getting the relevant
people into a room and waiting for the magic and ingenuity to happen.
Meeting Leadership and Facilitation
Meetings can be energetic and fun.
But fun can quickly turn into an unproductive free-for-all if the leader
(you) isn’t keeping a handle on the proceedings.
Good Meeting Manners
There are really no hard and fast rules for this. Etiquette and manners themselves can change, but a basic framework can be a useful tool.