[teampractices] A facilitator tool: Meeting Facilitator Control Panel

[Joel Aufrecht]

I experimented with a new tool last month.  I facilitated two different
full-day meetings where I had limited contact with the meeting sponsor or
chief client prior to the meeting, and was concerned that I didn't know
what facilitation approach they wanted.  I called this tool the
"Facilitator Control Panel".  The key benefits of this tool include:

* Making the facilitator's assumptions about how the meeting should be
facilitated explicit and visible to participants
* Allowing participants a voice in what tone and approach the facilitator
should employ.
* Allowing the facilitator to be intentional and informed, rather than
reactive and assumptive, in how they facilitate.

A picture:


​
For the first meeting, I drew the first two parameters this on the
whiteboard, and then spent a few minutes talking to the meeting
participants about it.  The key points included:

* This meeting is for the benefit of the participants
* The facilitator's job is to modify how the meeting would organically
function to make it better serve the participants
* Therefore the participants should have some voice in the overall tone and
goal of the facilitator(s).
* One very common problem for facilitators is, should I help this
(temporary, expensively gathered) group use their time to completely
address one topic, or to make sure that all topics get an equal hearing,
which usually means limiting discussion on one or more topics.  This is
shown via the Thorough vs Fast slider.
* Another parameter I offered was, should I as facilitator try to make the
meeting run smoothly, interrupting arguments between participants, or
should the facilitator encourage (constructive, polite) argument, and test
apparent agreement to try and uncover premature or incomplete agreement?

The names of the first two settings were modified upon suggestion by the
group. The last two settings were, I believe, suggestions from the group,
and functioned as humor.  At the risk of over-thinking: As a facilitator,
this gave me an extra means by which to inject humor into the group at
appropriate moments without being especially forced, without having to try
and think of something novel and funny (thanks to the magic of running
jokes), and with a light touch that reduced the risk of subjecting
participants to painfully strained and lengthy "jokes".

The "settings" the group chose reflected their composition and the purpose
of the meeting; I could imagine other groups choosing very different
settings.  We updated the joke settings several times during the day,
referenced the serious settings once or twice, and did not otherwise
interact with the control panel after the initial discussion.  In
retrospectives and an after-action survey, it was mentioned three times:
two participants listed the tool as a positive, and one reported that it
wasn't "particularly useful".

For the second meeting, I did not write out the settings and this tool was
completely conceptual.  I talked to the client prior to the meeting and
used the settings to help the client understand what was possible and to
express what they wanted on behalf of the meeting participants, which they
did.  I explained the settings to the participants in brief during the
(two-day) meeting.  Some participants did use some of this language and
framing to raise related issues during the meeting.  There was no
structured review of its value.

Overall I found this to tool be beneficial as a facilitator; probably a net
positive for participants; very simple and quick to implement; and
low-risk.  I will probably use it again, both as an explicit tool and as
something to discuss with clients prior to meetings.  I don't think the
labels are very clear or that the axes they define are ideal, and hope to
improve them.


*-- Joel Aufrecht *(they/them)
Program Manager (Technology)
Wikimedia Foundation
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