Excellent Question! You know you need a meeting facilitator when you are pretty nervous about an upcoming meeting. You may or may not know why, but you are probably concerned about a couple of things:
- I need to get my team/direct reports on board. They are crucial to our success.
- This is a really important meeting that is highly visible throughout the company, to my boss , and to my employees.
- I have waaaayyy too much to do and not enough time.
- I have my folks flying in from all parts of the country/world and we have a finite time to make some agreements about our path forward.
- I recognize the need to have an unbiased, objective person lead our meeting. This way, I can participate fully without having to worry about process issues (has everyone had a chance to weigh in?, are all the issues out on the table?, what is the strength of the commitments at the end of the day?) and my people won’t feel manipulated. I can feel confident that people aren’t doing the “dashboard dog” where they are just nodding their heads in agreement with me. We have a real discussion/debate and come to the best solutions possible.
- Although I hate to admit it, I am at a loss about how to get where I need to go.
A facilitator can help you design a smooth process to achieve your desired results. We’ve been facilitating meetings in the workplace for almost two dozen years, so we know a thing or two about teams, meetings, collaboration and most importantly, getting astonishing results! If you have a really important meeting coming up, give a call to see how we can help.
