Surveys show people say less than a quarter of the meetings they attend are a valuable use of their time. In this recording of the August Humanizing Work Meetup, Peter introduces the 6 goals an effective facilitator achieves in every meeting and how to use those to ensure your meetings are reliably worth the participants’ time. Read More
Ever facilitated a meeting that just seems to keep going off the rails? A framing statement is key to starting a meeting strong, and a… Read More
It's a classic facilitation blunder: You start giving instructions for an activity, and as you're talking, people begin the activity. You try to reel in those eager participants so you can get the rest of your instructions out. Then, as everyone starts, you realize you forgot something important and need to get the group back together for more instructions. The best facilitators are extremely deliberate about how they give instructions. Read More
Last week, I described how to do the observation step of Focused Conversation without having to talk about all the details. At this point, many facilitators would naturally want to guide the group through interpreting the data. But the Focused Conversation method prescribes another step in between: reflection. Read More
The Focused Conversation method asks us to start with observations before assigning labels - good, bad, effective, worthwhile, motivating, etc. In real-life facilitation, it can feel a little slow to start a retrospective with a simple "What happened this sprint?" Read More
In response to my recent post on developing your skills in 2016, several people mentioned facilitation as a skill they want to grow. As with many things, you can become good enough as a facilitator in a short time...and you can spend your life refining your skills. For most ScrumMasters, internal agile coaches, or agile leaders, I recommend two resources to grow enough facilitation skill so that facilitating’s not your constraint. Read More