How to Facilitate Your First Meeting
By: Rebecca Mott
Tags: Management, Meetings, Leadership, Facilitation

Plan the Agenda. The first step is to think about what you want to accomplish in the meeting and plan the agenda accordingly. Design the meeting according to the specific outcome, or set of outcomes, you want from the meeting. You can easily remember outcomes using what I call “D.R.I.P.” In general, your meeting will have as an outcome a Decision, Recommendations, Ideas, or a Plan. What most people have been taught is to create a checklist of topics to discuss. That will get you rambling conversations that go nowhere. Instead, think about one of the DRIP outcomes you want to achieve and plan the agenda to reach that outcome. In general, I don’t recommend more than one DRIP for a meeting.

Structure of the Agenda. Next, you want to structure a process that reaches the defined outcome. For example, if we need to make a decision for the meeting, a list of the options needs to be presented, discussed, and voted upon. The idea here is to make sure the structure of the agenda matches the outcome. The agenda lays out the process steps, not the topics. The topics discussed are subject to the process.

Assign Times to Agenda. Once you have laid out the parts of the agenda, you will want to put some thoughts into how much time you will allow for each part. Using the Decision example, you would have 20 minutes to present the options, 25 minutes to discuss, and 15 minutes to vote and close the meeting. Setting times for each part will help you keep the team on track to achieve the outcome.

Meeting Announcement. Most meetings come through email with a nondescript subject line and no agenda attached. That is a rookie mistake. Anytime you send a meeting notice, you need to make the subject line match the goal of the meeting. And you should attach an outline of the agenda. When people know what to expect, they will be more engaged when they show up. In the example of a Decisions meeting, you may also want to attach information regarding the options under discussion. You want to give participants as much pre-deliberation time as possible.

Start on Time. When you start on time, it conveys to everyone that you mean business. If most of the participants bothered to show up on time, don’t disrespect them by forcing them to wait on others. The latecomers will get the message and likely apologize for being late. If they are habitual latecomers, they will at least notify you before the next meeting that they are running late. They know you will start on time.

Pace the Meeting. If you structured your agenda correctly, you should have sufficient time to reach your outcome. Pace the meeting according to the process laid out in the agenda and the times you assigned to each part of the process. Be ready to move the team along to the next part of the process. A gentle reminder of how much time is left in the meeting is an easy way to nudge people along.

Recap the Outcome. At the conclusion of the meeting, you will want to end with a summary of the outcome. At this point, you can check for agreement in the room. A simple “Is everyone OK with what we have decided?” is enough to get people who dissent to speak up. You will need to follow-up with the dissenters after the meeting.

Send Meeting Summary to Participants. The last step is to send a summary of the meeting out to participants within a couple of days. Ideally, no later than the next day. This gives the participants a sense of closure that the work is finished. Otherwise, they may wonder (or forget) what was decided or created in the meeting.