Originally posted to the Truss blog

We talk a fair amount on this blog about how to have better meetings. And we should! Taking the time for some meetings will save time over all… but it’s a delicate matter and one of great responsibility. But let’s say you feel like you get it. You’re the person charged with meetings going well, and you know which agile ceremonies are worth having regularly, how to determine other things worth discussing synchronously, and how to create and stick to an agenda. But you get it, and you’re hungry for more. This post should help you get here by:

• offering structure by which to share skills and…
• suggesting when to deviate from (or go without) an agenda.

By including better facilitation practices in more aspects of your work, group dynamics will improve overall and everyone can focus on the actual work at hand.

Skill Shares

The more team members in a room know how to facilitate, the easier the conversation can be. Two ways to increase capacity in your organization are by mentorship and encouraging behavior which allows a group to facilitate itself.

We already talked a bit about how to mentor other facilitators in Well Met: The Facilitator, but it merits a deeper dive. To mentor other facilitators, first look for the helpers. Ask folks who see others raising their hands, help get a conversation on track, etc to review agendas with you. If they’re interested in trying out facilitation, backchannel while they or you facilitate, and debrief afterwards.

To get a group to be better at facilitating itself, ask folks to cue the person who comes after them in stack. Then, encourage people to self-regulate for time and how many points they make (one of the “Rules of 1”). Finally, work to get folks to cede the floor to someone who has spoken less than they have, often by prompting a quieter person with a question.

At Truss, we ran a quick 2-question survey to pair those interested in facilitating with those who already feel comfortable doing so. We stagger by skill level, so everyone has a chance to be in both a supporting and lead role.

We are Very Serious People.

When to deviate from the agenda

In Well Met: The Meeting Itself, we talked about how to create an agenda and then facilitate from that arena. This is an important and useful thing to do for a good long while, if not indefinitely. However, if you find yourself thinking “oh, I know what would totally work better instead!” and you’ve built trust with the group, it’s time to deviate.

My agendas, while well planned, often get tossed out within 5 minutes of any meeting starting. It’s similar to agile practices in that way – the preceding research and planning gives a solid sense of what problems are being solved and awareness of the context; but flexibility to adapt (or throw out) a plan based on what is most needed in the moment of action to achieve those goals. Because you’ll have facilitated many different sessions at this point, and tried out a lot of different facilitation practices, your toolbox and skill will be substantial enough to try something that seems more appropriate in the moment than your plan.

Taking a self-assured, but mildly cavalier approach to this is one successful approach to getting group buy-in for these deviations. “Well, I thought we were going to do X, but now that’s not going to help us get where we need to be, so we’re going to do Y instead. Any concerns about that?” while making eye contact to assess before moving on works well. Also sometimes “Wow Past Me has some terrible ideas. We clearly don’t need this entire next section in order to achieve our goal. Let’s skip it and save some time, shall we?” This needs to always be coupled with a reminder of what the goal of the meeting is, to keep all conversations on track.

Sometimes, if sufficient trust has not been built up, people will take this opportunity to discuss how the discussion will happen. Time box this and move on when the time box is done.

Other times, in groups with a particularly high level of trust, I won’t even share my agenda, which gives me leeway to adapt without making excuses. That said, I will have absolutely made at least one agenda in advance.

Where we’re going we don’t need agendas

And then sometimes there’s so much confusion about a topic that the meeting itself is to resolve the confusion. In which case it’s highly unlikely you get to have a traditional agenda. If this is the case, have a solid sense of who needs to be there and how the conversation might start. You might discover other folks are needed partway through, or that someone could be using their time better elsewhere. Apply the “law of two feet” here and let folks leave if they’re not needed.

As your comfort in facilitation grows alongside your activity toolbox, your ability to adapt in the moment will likely increase. To gain the benefits of that increased skill, allow yourself more flexibility while building out a stronger overall capacity in your organization. By

• offering structure by which to share skills and
• suggesting when to deviate from an agenda,

group dynamics will improve overall and everyone can focus on the actual work at hand.

Originally posted to the Truss blog

We’ve all been in dead-end meetings. No matter how dedicated and efficient your team is, a few bad meetings can derail their productivity and, even worse, their morale. In the next post of our series on maximizing the value of meetings, we talk about one of the aspects of a good meeting: the facilitator.

Practice the techniques highlighted in this series to:

• increase the effectiveness of meetings;
• decrease the number and duration of meetings;
• build team cohesion;
• cross-pollinate information across teams; and
• do so in a way which leads to new insights otherwise left buried.

You’ve learned how to determine whether you need a meeting and how to prepare for and drive those meetings, now we highlight how we select for that facilitator.

Who does this?

It’s a lot to take on. Plotting a course for effective meetings means setting aside time to discern if a meeting is actually needed, preparing for it, and assigning a dedicated person to facilitate the meeting. An important thing to note is that facilitators will participate differently in in a meeting. Experienced facilitators have a responsibility to not add their editorial opinions, and beginners may have a hard time facilitating while also joining a conversation.
 

Project managers as facilitators

In Waterfall, big plans are defined, then staff are tasked with executing a predetermined set of requirements. Project managers are responsible for tracking if individuals or departments are meeting deadlines such that the entire Gantt Chart stays on track.

In lower-case-a-agile, we see the project manager as facilitator rather than task tracker. The project manager should be primarily focused on creating uninterrupted time for the team, while also keeping an eye out for when sharing information would make that working time even more effective. This means the project manager should already have an eye out for meetings that would benefit the team and guard against those that won’t (our first post in this series). The project manager should have their finger on the pulse of what folks are up to so much of the work for agenda prep is already done (our second post in this series). Because agile team members are entrusted with finding the best route to solving a given problem, the project manager’s goal is to open and maintain the space for meaningful conversations, which points to the facilitation aspect of useful meetings (also the second post).

In short, at Truss we are structured to put project managers in the best position to uphold the responsibilities put forth in this series. But it’s not just on them.

Increasing facilitation capacity in your org

Facilitation is a core component of being a servant leader. But just as with any attempt at organizational change, it’s difficult for a project manager to come in and implement all this. A nurturing environment cultivated by the leaders of the organization means facilitation as a skill can build up throughout the organization. For this reason, when a project manager is unavailable, we tend to lean toward someone with experience in facilitation, and who doesn’t have a personal stake in the meeting itself. This could be an engineering lead, design lead, product manager, business lead, or founder. They often have additional authority and responsibility to a client.

Project managers can’t (and shouldn’t) be in every meeting. Whether there are multiple meetings happening at once or it just doesn’t make sense for the project manager to attend, other folks in the organization should also be upping their own facilitation game through facilitation mentoring. Project managers can support this by guiding a mentee through the agenda-building process, backchanneling about facilitation practices, flagging issues during meetings where a mentee and facilitator are both present, and debriefing afterward about questions or concerns.

Why would I want to be a facilitator?

To do so helps everyone make equitable space for others, amplifying the voices that might otherwise go unheard and the fountain of good ideas which accompanies that.

It also makes meetings go that much more smoothly, as the team is thinking about how to be effective and inclusive while maintaining focus on the objective. Learning to watch for signals and respecting stack can be distributed across the group, which helps everyone manage themselves.

Read more about deciding when to have a meeting and how to prepare for and drive an effective meeting to have the full impact this series offers.

Why are we doing all this?

Bad meetings, like bad policies and negative environments, are tractable problems. By following the techniques highlighted here around determining when to have meetings, how to prepare for them, and how to facilitate, your meetings can be worth the context switching they require.

Good facilitation allows you to have fewer meetings, and the ones you do have will:

• be more impactful,
• be more effective,
• build team cohesion,
• and lead to new insights otherwise left buried.

You can help make it happen!

Originally posted on the Truss blog

Everyone has been in a meeting that made them wonder, “What am I doing here?” While a meeting can be a productive way to drive a project forward, many meetings are the opposite—they disrupt productivity and waste valuable time. All it takes to ensure that a necessary meeting doesn’t go off the rails is a little bit of planning and someone to facilitate the process.

The first part in this series covered the hows and whys of determining that a meeting is necessary. Once you know you need one, it’s important to make the best use of everyone’s time. This requires some preparation in advance, and active attention to keeping the meeting on track.

Create an Agenda

Building an agenda is the most important, difficult, and fungible part of meeting facilitation. Here are the steps to developing a solid agenda:

• What concrete outcome do you need to get out of the meeting? You should be able to say this in one sentence. It should be the name of the meeting, and be included in any correspondence related to the meeting.
• Create a plan. Consider where the group is now (point A), and where they want to end up (point B). You likely need to talk to other people in order to figure this out.
• Identify your requirements and blockers. What would need to happen to get from point A to point B?
• What is your strategy for tackling these challenges? Pick activities that will help achieve the concrete outcome needed to get from point A to B. Search the internet for “facilitation activities” for some suggestions. A few of our favorites are:
  • Spectrograms to explore just how divisive various issues are.
  • Vizthink to externalize systems in people’s heads in a way that allows progress to be made.
  • Breakout groups to allow more people to be heard about a topic.
• Who are the leaders who can push this project forward? To push power outward, you’ll ideally work with a different person to lead each part. This isn’t The [Facilitator’s Name Here] Show

Time management is the hardest thing to get right at first. Here are some ways to effectively manage meeting time:

• Pad for time.
  • People will show up late. Decide how long you’re willing to wait (keep in mind waiting wastes everyone else’s time and sets a bad precedent) and stick to it. People will show up on time more often if they know you start on time and meetings are valuable experiences.
  • A/V will break. Showing up early to troubleshoot can save others time, but you can’t fix the remote setup.
  • Folks will want to dig into questions that matter, and having some extra time allows this to happen.
• Remember to have time to open and close. Rituals matter!

If you are new to facilitation, your agenda is your guide. The signposts you set in advance will help you remember how to get where you’re going when matters inevitably become complicated. As you become more experienced and gain trust, the agenda becomes more of a thinking exercise so you can adapt in the moment.
 

Facilitating

You’ve done all the work, you’re ready to try out your well-crafted agenda, and people are on the call or at the table (hopefully on time). What do you do now?

• Set expectations around communication. Two suggestions we have found the most useful are:
  • Demonstrate respect for each other (and the clock) at all times.
  • Follow the Rules of 1:
    • Make 1 point and pass it on. This distributes the conversational load across more people, which means more people get heard from.
    • 1 diva, 1 mic. Only one person should be speaking at a time, which prevents people speaking over each other, difficulty hearing for those dialing in, and gives equal attention to all speakers.
    • Have 1 empty chair at the table/1 available slot for call-in. This makes it welcoming (and non-disruptive) for that latecomer (or someone from a different breakout session) to join you.
    • Speak 1/Nth of the time. If you’re quiet, know people want to hear from you. If you’re gregarious, dial it back a bit to make room for others.
  • Once you’re comfortable with those, consider adding in hand signals (Zoom and Maestro also offer approximations). These can save time by getting a “temperature check” on how the team is responding to a current thread without needing to hear from individuals one-by-one.
  • Aspiration, an organization focused on building technical capacity for nonprofits has some pretty great participant guidelines that are useful to adapt to your own circumstances.

• Take “stack.” People signal to the facilitator or the stack keeper when they’d like to speak up in a discussion. The facilitator might call on people in the order they signaled, or they might change the order to have more equal speaking time based on the stack and to account for folks who have spoken less.
• Stop a speaker from going on too long. (You’ve already made this OK to do if they make more than one point or if they speak more than 1/Nth of the time.) You can do this through body language, hand signals, and directly speaking to the person.
• If people get into eddies of conversation (this often happens with two people going back-and-forth, rather than the group being engaged), push for a choice to be made, or if that can’t happen, clarity to be reached. This will encourage the discussion to move forward to a place where ideas can be tested by coming in contact with reality. If people truly need more time, offer to schedule a meeting specific to that topic (with a concrete outcome) so people can return to the subject at hand.

Who should be responsible for all this work? In the final part of this series, Well Met: The Facilitator, we’ll talk about what makes a good facilitator and how to choose the right person for the job.

Originally posted on the Truss blog

We’ve all been in bad meetings. And no matter how great your crew is, bad meetings waste time and can degrade the culture you’ve worked hard to build. We’ve talked before about which meetings are worth having, now it’s time to dive into how to get the most out of those meetings. Doing so will:

• increase the effectiveness of meetings;
• decrease the number and duration of meetings;
• build team cohesion;
• cross-pollinate information across teams; and
• do so in a way which leads to new insights otherwise left buried.

To reap these benefits, utilize the guiding principles in this three-part series for useful meetings: determining whether you need a meeting, building an agenda and facilitating, and choosing the right facilitator to ensure everything runs smoothly.  In this first part, we’ll (re)cover some of the ways to be sure the meeting you want to hold is worthwhile.

Any scheduled event is potentially disruptive to a colleague’s flow. Meetings can be a waste of time and, even in the best case scenario, often require context switching. It’s important to make sure you actually need someone to do something synchronously with you, rather than calling a meeting for something that be fit into their own flow asynchronously in a more optimal way.

When it makes sense to have a meeting

The following circumstances are worthy of a meeting:

1. When something can’t be decided on asynchronously – A chat (like Slack) just isn’t working. Something is being lost in tone or the information being gathered and the team would benefit from more mediums of communication (visual, verbal, physical) happening all at once.
2. When something has been decided, but there needs to be a group status update to move on to other things – Sometimes, everyone knows the status of a project, but they don’t know that everyone else is on the same page. This can lead to concerns about leaving someone behind and cause a slow the velocity of the project. A recap meeting that ensures that everyone is aware of what decisions are set allows the team to collectively move on to the next phase.
3. Distributed self-coordination – Instead of reading documentation, sometimes it’s more efficient to have a rapid-iteration conversation about where to go to next, together. This example is similar to scenario #1 with a splash of #2.
4. To build team cohesion – Asynchronous communication with occasional one-on-ones just doesn’t keep the whole team together. Sometimes the team needs to get together to learn from each other, and to realize just how in alignment they already are. This scenario is mostly #2 with a splash of #1.

When you shouldn’t have a meeting

Some “meetings” do more to waste time than to move a project forward, leading to a lot of frustrated team members. Here are some signs you’re not having a meaningful meeting:

1. You’re reading together – There are some folks who just don’t read materials they are sent. Whether they don’t have the time, the material is irrelevant, or they don’t like reading doesn’t matter. What matters is that someone has just disrupted another person’s flow to insist they come and read this thing right now, in a “meeting.”
2. You’re listening to one person speak – If you want to give a presentation, own it! But a presentation can be ingested just as easily via a video or audio recording as it can in person. Again, don’t disrupt people’s flows.
3. You’re hearing people talking about things they already know – This isn’t a meeting, it’s a panel discussion. The same principles apply as listening to one person speak. If you’re not up to adapting to your audience or working with them to get somewhere new, just record it. The knowledge is still useful, but the disruption of other people’s flows is not.

On the other hand, question and answer sessions after reading, presenting, or paneling do make sense to do interactively, so it’s worth it to call a meeting after the above non-meetings to share ideas.

Useful gatherings that are not meetings

There are times when it makes sense to meet with someone or a group that don’t fit the parameters above. They include:

• Conversations – These are great, but trying to facilitate them with the meeting-level rigor suggested in this series will not make you popular amongst your peers.
• Celebrations – While some programming is useful, celebrations are organic things that don’t need any more structure than they already have.
• Skill shares – Vital to upping skills and building relationships, these also should be a bit more organic than what is described in this post.

Some of the same principles will apply, but these gatherings are not what this series focuses on.

Why are we doing all this?

Bad meetings, like bad policies and negative environments, are tractable problems. By following the techniques highlighted here around determining when to have meetings, your meetings can be worth the context switching they require by being impactful and more effective, building team cohesion, and leading to new insights that would otherwise be left buried.

OK, let’s say you definitely need this meeting. The next step is to be sure those meetings matter through agenda building and facilitation. Discover how to utilize these strategies in part two of our series, Well Met: The Meeting Itself.