Day 23 in MIT Sloan Fellows Class 2023, Facilitation skill
What is "facilitation"?
Facilitation is a technique to get the right balance of results, relationships, and processes. So everyone should consider the following responsibilities.
- Define the purpose of meetings
- Design a results-based agenda
- Invite the right team members
- Encourage participation
- Reach agreement on how to execute
- Model effective listening
- Open-minded to the ideas of others
- Identify and transform conflict
- Deal with "difficult participants."
- Clarify next steps and assign action items
- Carry out the decision-making process
- Conduct evaluation of the group process
- Follow up after the meeting
Not all meetings require excellent facilitation because some are just for reporting.
Facilitator's Toolkit
- Probing
- Paraphrasing
- Bridginging and referring back
- Shifting perspective
- Summarizing
- Giving positive reinforcements
- Build consensus
- Energize quiet audience
- Manage conflicts
- Manage time
- Invite perspectives and lead practical problems solving activities
Make meetings more productive.
To transform our meetings more productive, we should understand the flow of the meetings/discussions. It starts from open idea brainstorming, then moves to narrow ideas. We evaluate and categorize ideas in that process. Finally, we make a decision.
If the facilitator understands this process, we can create a more efficient agenda and move forward quickly.
