Great Facilitation: Leading Engaging and Productive Meetings

In many organizations, calendars are packed with meetings. People go from one Zoom call or conference room to another. Individual work gets puzzled around the edges with whatever time and energy is left. Without a doubt, people have too many meetings on their calendars. The larger the organization and the more senior the role, the worse it gets. Some executives we know estimate that 80% of their calendar is filled with meetings—many of which don’t really need to be a meeting or don’t really require them to be there.

So, why are so many meetings so bad?

Expert trainer and coach, Richard Lawrence, frequently quips that when people are working together, they almost never describe it after the fact as a meeting. They just say “we worked on such and such.” But when it feels overly formal and/or like a waste of their time, people often describe the time together as a meeting. This points to a need for stronger facilitation.

Facilitation is a key part of the job for ScrumMasters, Product Owners, leaders, trainers, and coaches. But few people have intentionally developed this skill. Facilitation is much more than gathering people and following an agenda. It starts well before the meeting itself does. Great facilitation includes understanding how to:

• Have a Clear, Motivating Purpose
• Get Clear On Your Role
• Deal With Your Own Energy & Baggage
• Use the Focused Conversation Pattern
• Start Strong
• Use Interactive, Visual Tools
• Diverge, Explore & Converge
• Close Strong

If you’re interested in developing your facilitation skills, we invite you to join us for a virtual, half-day workshop. During this hands-on workshop, participants learn what it means to facilitate, how that is different from what most of us do when we “run a meeting”. We’ll share techniques for leading engaging and productive meetings, and then practice the essential skills and tools needed to facilitate more confidently and effectively.

About the Course Facilitators

Peter Green

Peter helps leaders discover how to create the outcomes they care about the most. He draws on a unique combination of deep empathy and keen insight developed by an almost stubborn insistence on staying actively involved in seemingly disconnected fields, including the creative arts, business, psychology, leadership, organizational design, and philosophy. Peter majored in music composition at Arizona State University. He is an in-demand trumpet player and recording engineer.

At Adobe Systems, Peter led an Agile transformation that enabled the shift to a subscription business model. He co-developed the Certified Agile Leadership program for the Scrum Alliance. He has trained, coached, and advised dozens of organizations to create outcomes that range from leadership development, to creating vision and strategy, to creating a culture of innovation, to clarifying and validating customer segments and needs, to reinventing business models and products, to creating high performing, Agile teams.

Peter is a Certified Scrum Trainer, a graduate of the ORSC coaching system, a certified Leadership Agility and Leadership Circle coach, a certified Innovation Games practitioner, and the co-founder of the Humanizing Work company. He is an avid reader and idea-combiner. He is a firm believer in the power of range and a growth mindset. He spends his working hours dedicated to nudging the world of work towards a more human-centric, meaningful, and prosperous future. He spends his other waking hours enjoying time with his wife and five kids, running, hiking, playing golf, and making music and visual arts.

Richard Lawrence

Richard Lawrence’s superpower is bringing together seemingly unrelated fields and ideas to create new possibilities. Drawing on a diverse background in software development, engineering, anthropology, design, and political science, Richard trains and coaches people to collaborate more effectively with other people to solve complex, meaningful problems.

Richard is a Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer, as well as a certified trainer of the accelerated learning method, Training from the Back of the Room. His book, Behavior-Driven Development with Cucumber, was published by Addison-Wesley in 2019 (for more information, visit bddwithcucumber.com).

When he’s not working with clients, you’ll often find Richard cooking, playing music, practicing Muay Thai, or flying down a mountain on his mountain bike.