Techniques for Facilitating Meeting Discussions

12/02/2003

Techniques for Facilitating Meeting Discussions

"Nadie educa a nadie ni nadie se educa a sí mismo, los hombres se educan en comunión." - Paulo Freire Quoted by Olivia Gonzalez Campos at World Forum Seminar, NAEYC 2003

TECHNIQUES FOR FACILITATING MEETING DISCUSSIONS

In the Exchange publication Does Your Team Work? Ideas for Bringing Your Staff Together, Roger Neugebauer offers suggestions for facilitating discussions in staff meetings in his article, "Managing Meetings."

* Plant proper expectations. People tend to hear what they expect to hear . . . If meeting participants come to a meeting expecting to hear the same old dull reports and irrelevant discussions, they will start off expecting to be bored and inattentive . . . When you have an especially important piece of information to convey, or a critical decision to be made, or creative ideas to be developed without delay . . .you need to break meeting participants out of that rut of their normal expectations. You could give them a clear signal that something different is going to take place by meeting in a different place, in a different kind of setting (for example, a home as opposed to the center), or at a different time. Or you could start the meeting off more dramatically by being more animated, by using visual aids, or by bringing in a new person to make the presentation.

* Keep the energy level high. The energy of a group in a meeting depends on many factors, including some you cannot control. But there is much you can do toward keeping interest high. Most importantly, your interest, alertness, and intensity are contagious, so give it your best. Don't be reluctant to use body language to underscore your involvement with the group. Move around, move close to the member who's talking, use your hands . . .

* Ask provocative questions. Ask questions that induce a free flow of opinion and draw out information. Avoid questions that elicit simple yes or no answers which require no thinking. Rather, ask who, what, where, when, or why questions which make a simple answer impossible . . .

* Avoid excessive negativism. One sure way to discourage group members from offering opinions and suggestions is to have every assertion greeted with a chorus of criticism. A bit of a person's ego is invested in every idea she puts before a group. When the idea is attacked, she feels personally attacked. The next time she has an idea, she will think twice about the risks before proposing it . . .

* Encourage good listening. Oftentimes participants in an important discussion become so preoccupied with what they are going to say themselves that they don't bother to listen to what the others are saying . . . To ensure that participants are listening and understanding each other, the chairperson can require each speaker to restate the position of the previous speaker (to that person's satisfaction) before stating her own position.

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