I’m frustrated. Really frustrated. This article is for those who don’t know about facilitation.
I’ve just spent time looking online at all the Tips and Techniques on how to run effective meetings. They are given by people who say they know all the answers.
The answers consist of those that have been broadcast for years and years, and are all about the meeting leader. The leader that has everything planned and buttoned up before the meeting starts. Including strict time limits with a detailed agenda that THEY KNOW is the right way to go. The meeting looks right for them!
Well I’m sorry experts, but it’s not about the meeting leader. It’s about the group. You can have the most perfectly detailed agenda and feel proud about it, but most people are different in personality, ability, styles of working and learning, approach and output. One size does not fit all. It never has.
Furthermore, most of the photographs show the leader filling in a flip chart. The leader doing all the work (they designed it all and they are implementing their plan) with the group sitting around a table being lectured to.
Some show a wall covered in Post-it notes combined with lines and scribble – most of which is illegible.
How much money has been spent training people to run meetings? Why do they still go wrong and why do people thrash out the same old training year after year? We must step up and do it differently!
