Meeting Facilitation
By Arrangement
Service Description
This service does two things - it helps meetings to achieve their outcomes more effectively, and it demonstrates and therefore teaches meeting skills to the participants for future use.
Our facilitators are senior trainers who are experienced in working with people from many areas - government officers, all levels of managers from industry and commerce, and from community bodies and special interest groups.
Who Will Benefit?
Organisations that have important meetings scheduled or as a regular part of business; meetings between branch and head office executives; management and rank-and-file meetings; inter-faculty or department meetings; environment negotiations; local government-ratepayer meetings; school-parent association meetings; department-community meetings; service provider-user group meetings.
Service Outline
The service consists of several phases:
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Briefing
A briefing session with the client to understand or clarify the purpose of the meeting, and to discuss the dynamics of the participants or participant groups, and to fine-tune the format of the meeting.
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Preliminary Skills Session (Optional)
A session on the day of the meeting before official business begins, briefing the participants on some discussion procedures and language models which will help them in the meeting. These include: how to generate clear statements or clarify another person's meaning, listening skills, techniques for turning disagreement to agreement, rule-setting and consensus at the beginning of agenda items for content, procedure, and desired outcome for the item.
Experience shows that a minimum of two to three hours is needed for this preliminary session, particularly to allow the participants to try out the skills in a non-threatening, detached way.
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Facilitation
The consultant acts 'hands-on' during the meeting, drawing attention to points in the discussions where communication options could be applied to advantage. The consultant is a meta-chairperson, interacting during the meeting, rather than passively observing, and commenting later. In this way, unprofitable lines of discussion or procedure are nipped in the bud, often dramatically demonstrating to participants the application of a particular skill, so that they can then use it more effectively.
Naturally, the consultant is impartial to the points of view being expressed, and is always subject to rulings from the chair, or client.
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Debriefing
A formal or informal session can follow, where the consultant reviews the process of the meeting with either all the participants, or the client, or both.