Leading Decisive Meetings

As a leader, do you know how to lead a decisive meeting? 

Simply because someone is appointed to a leadership position, it doesn't mean that they automatically know how to lead effective meetings.  To keep momentum in your work, you need to run great meetings. Make your next meeting productive with these three guidelines:

• Restate the meeting's purpose. Even if you think everyone knows it, it helps to remind them and sharpen the group's focus.
• Include everyone. If one or two people dominate the conversation and others are shy about leaping in, draw out people through facilitating by saying, "Thanks for those ideas, Carl. What are your thoughts about this problem, Megan?"
• End well. Close the meeting with specific actions to take and a clear time frame. State the decisions the group has made, who owns what, and when they need to report back to the team. 

Adapted from Guide to Project Management (HBR OnPoint Collection).

Leading Meetings When No One Wants to Talk

As a leader, how do you handle meetings when participants don't want to speak up?

Discussions during meetings can be feast or famine. Either you can't get a word in edgewise or no one speaks up. Next time your meeting falls silent, try these tactics:

• Let it be. Wait a moment before breaking the silence and offering a suggestion. The group may need time to reflect on an idea.
• Name it. Call out what's happening, and ask the group about it, "It seems we've gone quiet. Does anyone want to talk about what's going on?"
• Take a break. Sometimes a short break gives people the chance to refocus.
• Think facilitation.  Rethink the processes used in your meetings.  Do your meetings included facilitated discussions?  If not, this might be just what you need to balance the amount of conversation.

Adapted from Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter (HBR OnPoint Collection).

Are You Asking the Right Questions?

As a leader, do you ask the right questions to move forward the work of your school/organization?

As a leader, you have responsibility to set direction, sustain the vision of your school/organization, develop the people within the organization, lead and manage your core business, and secure accountability.  It's a tall order for anyone.  All skilled leaders know that facilitated processes are the most effective to build depth of understanding of issues, to create strategies for moving the work forward, and for ensuring buy-in on the part of staff.  It's a lot to do but this picture is a common one for knowledgeable leaders who get results. 

But something's missing.  Even if we demonstrate these behaviours, we may miss the mark with our facilitated processes if we don't ask the right questions during the processes.  This became painfully evident for me very recently at a facilitated session.  Without the right questions even the most dedicated members of staff can take your school's/organization's work off in different directions. 

Next time you call people together for a facilitated process - regardless of the purpose - be absolutely certain that you're working with the right questions.  If your question isn't finely tuned to your school's/organization's needs, you'll end up with high-quality work......but it won't be the work you need. 

It just might be time to brush up on your facilitation skills or to invest in the skills of a well-experienced outsider.  A misguided facilitation can get you going quickly in the wrong direction.

Leading Effective Meetings

As a leader, how do you ensure purpose in your meetings?

As leaders, we generally have the positional authority to call meetings when we wish.  This has obvious advantages but it also has significant potential risks for you as a leader.  If your meetings are purposeful and engaging, you run the risk of dooming all meetings to events your staff members learn to dread.

Here are four simple ideas to ensure effective meetings:

• Have a clear purpose.  Be sure that each meeting has a clear purpose and that everyone attending knows the purpose in advance.  People who attend can come prepared.  If your purpose is clear, your outcomes will be more readily accomplished.
• Ensure everyone who needs to be there is present.  Be sure that everyone who needs to know - or wants to know - is included.  If the meeting is worth calling, it's worth having all valuable perspectives present in the room.  It's annoying and ineffective when you find you need someone there and they weren't even invited.
• Operate by pre-determined norms.  Establish clear, easy-to-follow norms and stick by them.  People appreciate how norms focus meetings and get the work done in a timely manner.
• Use facilitation strategies. A well-facilitated meeting engages the participants and it accomplishes the outcomes desired.  Without facilitation, the meeting can go on and on while its trying to find a focus.  What usually ends up happening is that one person takes over and it becomes their meeting and you lose the value of those who are present. 

The Elephants in the Room

As a leader, do you name the elephants in the room and ensure they are dealt with?

Every school/organization has its own 'elephants in the room'.  There are always issues that hover beneath the surface that impede improvement efforts.  In a school, these may be issues related to why certain groups of students are not being successful, whether we truly believe that all students can learn given sufficient time and the right supports, whether consequences are punishments or are designed to restore relationships, why certain staff members appear to be privileged, and....the list goes on. 

The job of the leader is to summon up the courage to name these 'elephants' and then to provide a forum for these to be worked through.  Sound easy?  It may be if it's done superficially or if it's done from the stance of 'the boss'.  It's not so easy if you - as leader - truly want to address the issue at hand.  It's tough because it demands courage.  It demands comfort with uncertainty about how discussions will unfold.  And in particular, it demands skills in being able to facilitate a discussion so that all voices are heard and differing perspectives can be surfaced in a respectful manner.  This is the toughest part of all.  In fact, it is often seen as so difficult, leaders will sometimes let the 'elephants' remain in the room and not address them at all because the challenge of dealing with them is just too great.  However, as a leader, can you ethically let this happen?  You have been entrusted with the leading of a school/organization with confidence in your knowledge and skills to lead.  Dealing with challenging issues like the 'elephants' demands a lot of you but avoidance of issues sustains the status quo when improvement is possible if the challenges are faced. 

What can you - as a leader - do about this?  Dealing with difficult and complex issues requires confidence on your part as well as the skills of facilitation.  The confidence needs to be summoned up from inner strength.  The facilitation skills can be learned. 

If you don't face these 'elephants', true and important change can't happen.  The critical conversations won't take place.  Most significantly, those who rely on you - students, parents, staff - are being let down because they aren't being provided with the leadership that's needed.  It won't be easy the first time.  You might even fail.  However, choosing not to act should not be an option because it's a guarantee that nothing will change.

Are you a facilitative leader?

As a leader, do you lead in a facilitative manner?  Much of what any leader needs to do is to facilitate the meetings, conversations, learning, and the work of a staff.  Yet how many of us actually have the skills to facilitate?  Simply because someone is in a leadership position, it does not necessarily mean that they have the skills of a facilitator.  In fact, many don't.  Facilitative leaders use specific processes that engage and include people.  These processes are carefully thought-out and designed in such a way that the leader provides the time, space, and processes to ensure that everyone who needs to be involved can take part, has a voice in the work that is done, and has a sense of ownership over the work and/or decisions made.  Facilitative leaders have a calm and calming manner because they know the processes to use to work through virtually any situation.  If facilitation skills are not yet part of your leadership repertoire, it might just be a very wise investment on your part to look at how you can begin to be more facilitative in your leadership.  You just might be very surprised to learn just how talented, knowledgeable, and skilled your staff is!

Facilitative Leadership

As a leader, are you facilitative or directive?

Facilitation is a way of providing leadership without taking the reins.  It's the facilitator's job to get others to assume responsibility and take the lead. 

Here's an example:  Your employees bring you a problem, but instead of offering them solutions, you offer them a method to guide the members with which they can develop their own answers.  You attend the meetings to guide the members through their discussions, step-by-step, encouraging them to reach their own conclusions.

Rather than being a player, a facilitators acts more like a referee.  That means you watch the action, more than participate in it.  You control which activities happen.  You keep your finger on the pulse and know when to move on or to wrap things up.  Most important, you help members define and reach their goals. 


From: Facilitating With Ease! by Ingrid Bens
Published by: Jossey-Bass