Invite the right people to the meeting
This step can be a tough one unless you know your team and the stakeholders well. Knowing the meeting sponsor's key objectives will help. You can use those objectives to think about who might contribute to finding a solution or moving the conversation forward. Consider who might have the answers to some of the possible questions—those are the people who likely need to join the meeting.
Prepare participants for the meeting ahead of time
Participants are much more likely to engage in a meeting when they have a chance to think through the agenda and identify where they may contribute. Before your meeting, provide the attendees with some additional context beyond the subject line of the invite. This can be in the form of a purpose statement, an agenda, or supporting materials.
It's usually easiest to attach this information to the invite so that people can access them quickly. For example, the invite for a kickoff call might include a purpose statement that says, "To effectively launch our initiative with a vision, charter, roles, and norms, and a group commitment to each of these."
Develop a question-based agenda that encourages participation
One of the greatest value adds of being a facilitator is that, as a neutral party, you can bring up areas of concern or opportunity in the form of a question. Asking a skillfully crafted question can make larger topics feel more accessible and draw attendees to offer their expertise.
For example, a typical agenda item like "discuss strategic plan" might feel too large for any one attendee to answer. But replacing it with questions that lead to the desired outcome will make the topic more accessible and open to discussion. Instead of “discuss strategic plan,” try questions like these: "What key market threat requires our attention? How could it affect us, and what actions would enable us to anticipate them?"
Start the meeting by sharing an "excite statement"
Even with the best preparation, people often come to meetings carrying the weight of the day with them. One of your first moves when the meeting begins should be to get everyone focused on the primary purpose of the meeting and what you hope to achieve by the end of it. An excite statement can help focus the team and give them a good reason to participate.
Excite statements summarize the purpose, outcomes, benefits of attending, how everyone will participate, and the participant roles and responsibilities. As you become more practiced at facilitating, you will develop your own style for this, but initially, the below script can function as a good starting point:
Greeting: Good morning and welcome!
Purpose: Our purpose for this workshop is to identify and adopt the changes that will improve our daily workflow.
Outcomes and benefits: This is our time to dig in on this topic and determine what priority issues to go after and how, so the key outcome for this session is a plan of the experiments we will try.
How everyone will participate: In a moment, we'll get your input. First, though, we are going to work together, both here as a group and in small breakouts. I'll facilitate the group work, though we'll need volunteers to write down your results during the breakouts. Will that work for the group?
Create opportunities for participant engagement
One of the primary purposes of facilitation is to draw out thoughts and responses from team members to increase participation and elevate the outcomes. If you're simply reading off the line items on an agenda, people are inclined not to say much and just go along with the statements. But if you ask for thoughts on a particular topic or pose questions, it naturally encourages more participation.
Visual collaboration software can help facilitate discussion by giving participants something visual to engage with and somewhere to share input—no matter their working style. It can also identify points of departure and keep teams honest about what you do agree to. Be sure to avoid making blanket statements and do a temperature check with the team periodically to see if anyone has additional input.
