[teampractices] A facilitator tool: Meeting Facilitator Control Panel

[Maria Cruz]

This is super helpful, Joel, thank you!
I have a follow up question: what do "face South" and "face North" refer
to? I looked it up
<https://www.google.com/search?q=face+south+vs+face+north&oq=face+south+vs+face+north&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i8i30k1l2.11981.12407.0.12711.3.3.0.0.0.0.152.304.0j2.2.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..1.2.304...0i8i7i30k1j0i8i13i30k1.de0VqEdKsd4>
online, and I only found this:

> Typically a south-facing home gets sun for most of the day, especially at
> the front of the house, and is therefore usually brighter and warmer. A
> north-facing home gets sun at the back of the house and is typically darker
> and naturally cooler than a south-facing one






*María Cruz * \\  Communications and Outreach project manager, L&E
Team \\ Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc.
mcruz at wikimedia.org  |  Twitter:  @marianarra_
<https://twitter.com/marianarra_>

On Mon, Sep 11, 2017 at 2:24 PM, Joel Aufrecht <jaufrecht at wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> 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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>
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