Today I want to share with you all five ways to keep group conversations moving forward. If you ever worked in a group, you know how critical it is to have structure in place and to maintain direction so that the expected outcomes get reached.
It’s common for meetings to lack structure and be a disorganized chaos of ideas, opinions, and attitudes which results in lost productivity, wasted time and delayed action. Unclear group conversations and meetings that don’t involve the participants often complicate existing communication problems even further which leads to bitterness among group members. Members become bored and attempt to leave meetings early or avoid meetings completely, but with the use of a meeting facilitator, the group can stay on task and communicate in a relevant and effective manner to achieve the expected results.
Facilitating group meetings can be difficult because we’re encouraged to be “nice” and we don’t want to appear pushy, in-charge, or mean when keeping the group conversation moving forward. With the five facilitation tips below, you can ensure effective and engaging meetings that encourage participation from all members without appearing as a difficult or pushy facilitator.
How to Ensure Group Conversations Stay on Track:
Involve every meeting participant
- Be comfortable interrupting
- Actively listen to meeting participants
- Know when to change the subject
- Build meaningful relationships
1. INVOLVE EVERY MEETING PARTICIPANT
Often one person will take on a leadership role during group conversations where they feel the need to direct the flow of conversation when they are using the meeting as a personal platform to express their personal thoughts, ideas, and opinions. For fear of appearing mean or hostile, other participants will allow that individual to command the conversation although their body language illustrates boredom or desire to speak. As a facilitator, acknowledge the speaker and redirect the conversation to others by asking their opinions.
For example, “Adam – well done keeping us informed on the golf industry. Bill you just recently started a golf store, what have you learned there? What internal success stories can you share with the group?”
In the above example, the facilitator maintains the connection to Adam while redirecting and engaging another participant in the meeting. Starting with the acknowledgement makes redirecting easier, then picking up on what others have said or their background allows you to redirect the conversation to keep every participant involved and ensure meeting effectiveness.
2. BE COMFORTABLE INTERRUPTING WHEN APPROPRIATE
To facilitate an effective meeting, you need to interrupt. Interruptions are a great tool if they don’t have to be bad. Set your personal ego aside and politely stop that participant from speaking – all the meeting participants will thank you when they achieve the desired outcome.
Surprisingly, those who speak most often need cues of when to stop to allow other participants to speak. A good group conversation facilitator keeps the conversation on-topic, prevents participants from monopolizing the conversation and focuses on achieving the purpose of the meeting.
3. ACTIVELY LISTEN TO MEETING PARTICIPANTS
The easiest way to miss value in a meeting is thinking about what to say while others are speaking. Thinking about your position or response while someone is explaining their position or idea means you miss key information and context. A good group conversation facilitator stays present and focuses their attention to understand what other participants are saying. A facilitator takes in all that is being said so they can interject, summarize, or connect others to enhance group clarity or redirect the conversation. Without active listening, effective communication rarely occurs and the expected outcome never gets achieved.
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4. KNOW WHEN TO LEAVE A SUBJECT
When facilitating a group of buzzing members full of energy, you can struggle to keep every idea captured and organized. Chaos can be good, but organized chaos is better. As a facilitator it’s important to maintain a certain amount of flexibility in moving between subjects, but also to be aware of when ideas are left hanging.
In groups with disengaged participants, shifting subjects quickly can lead to more engagement, yet it can also lead to many open-ended ideas that don’t become actions because the conversation on the idea never reached completion.
As a group conversation facilitator, recognize that the subject is changing and that an idea is left incomplete. Stop the group and ask what needs to happen for the idea to become an action. This encourages participants to build on the idea and often leads to deeper listening and better dialogue so the meeting starts to produce results.
5. BUILD MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS
Communicating ideas is good, and relating to one another’s ideas is even better. Chatting doesn’t mean relationships develop. When we relate to others, we gain perspective and better understand how others feel and think. We consider their input differently – so we find more opportunities to build on their ideas and react better to unconventional approaches. Some participants invest less time relating and talk without realizing that they may have offended or insulted others or their ideas.
To be heard, respected, and thought of as “real,” consider how you listen, respect and are real to the other meeting participants and ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you consider another’s perspective when speaking?
- Do you show respect for their ideas and build upon their ideas or do you only promote your own solutions?
- Are you illustrating your care for the quality of conversation and connections?
Building relationships allows you to draw the best out of others while reducing the friction that creates heat and drains momentum during meetings. Building meaningful relationships allows you the ability to be direct and keep group’s conversation moving forward.
The key to being an effective and engaging group conversation facilitator is to maintain a curious approach versus a commanding approach. The next time you facilitate try out the tips above and let us know how you changed the results.
