meeting facilitation
Meetings, and other forms of communications, are often where decisions are made, actions decided, where trauma is shared, where conflicts arise.This is a starting place to learn about how to plan and facilitate a meeting.
If your group has decided to have a meeting, which is an important starting place, make sure folks have agreed there is a need to meet and have decided on a date and time, it usually helps to have a general or loose agenda. An agenda can be a detailed outline of the meetings, it can be talking points, it can be questions posed, you and all the attendants should know what the purpose of the meeting is, and what should come out of the meeting. An agenda can look like anything, it can be on a Google Doc, a notepad. It is nice to share the agenda with participants before and at the meeting so they know the overall flow of the meeting.
A meeting may be a place to catch up or share stories, and may not necessarily need an end time. However, often it’s important to have general intentions on when the meeting ends, this honors our individual and collective capacity, sets boundaries, and encourages people to be succinct in their talking points.
As meetings are often places to make decisions as a group, it is important to have clear guidelines and understandings of consensus. If your group operates on full consensus (every member in your group must agree) make sure to hear from every person, ask those who haven’t spoken if they would like to share their thoughts, and allow for silence so people can speak up in disagreement if they want. If you are meeting digitally, such as Zoom, ask people to express agreement or disagreement in the chat, using Zoom reaction, or by coming off mute. If you are facilitating the meeting and making a decision, it is your role to make space for discussion and come to an agreement before moving the group to the next agenda item. To decrease flakiness and create accountability and follow through on action items, someone at the end of the meeting can summarize the meeting and verbalize next steps and key decisions made.
What type of facilitator are you?
Depending on what type of organizing space you are in, meeting facilitation may be a big part of your role as an organizer. If that is the case for you, this will hopefully give you some insight of facilitation.
Everyone can choose the style of facilitation they like the most. Some facilitators are funny, some are super chill, some are very visually minded with presentations. As you begin to facilitate meetings you will likely find the type of facilitator that fits the best. However, no matter what type of facilitator you are, we want to talk about the role silence plays in meetings.
Especially in digital spaces, silence in a meeting can be uncomfortable and awkward. However, silence is okay and it is important especially when talking through traumatic or vulnerable moments. Silence allows people to think and digest information, and it can honor the experience that was just shared. As a facilitator, you get to choose to emphasize moments of silence.
The role of the facilitator is to make space for participants to engage in conversation, tension, and silence. It is your role to invite each person to speak if you notice a couple folks are speaking more than others. You are not the “leader” in this sense, you are guiding people through a conversation.