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How to Understand the Political Risks of Meetings Using an Interview Method
Interview Method Interview participants to understand as much as possible about them, the people they work with, and their business. Speak with all the participants, preferably one-on-one for about 30...
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Meetings Generate Outcomes While Workshops Create Outputs
Use of the term “workshop” is frequently considered synonymous with the term “meeting.” Yet five practical differences include: Meetings consist of loosely related topics that serve to review and...
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Values Answer, “Who are we?” and Benjamin Franklin Called Them Virtues
We always find it interesting that consulting firms promulgate their own, unique operational definitions. The term ‘values’ can be found called many things including “Guiding Principles”, “Tenets of...
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What to Include in a Workshop Participants’ Package for a Major Initiative
Besides understanding the difference between his or her meeting roles and project or work roles, provide each participant with a participant handout or pre-read package. At launch or kickoff or any...
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Here Are Two Effective Five-Minute Icebreakers for Large Groups
All groups, especially very large groups, are known to perform better when the participants know something about each other. While time constraints prohibit traditional, self-spoken icebreakers with...
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How to Transform Challenging Personality Types During Meetings & Workshops
Meeting leaders and facilitators frequently encounter challenging personality types, from the over-bearing to the drop out. The following table captures some clearly identified types, their...
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Understand the Value of Argumentation for Organizational Decision-making
A strong facilitator will improve their critical thinking. They ought understand the holarchial nature of business and other people organized around common cause. Critical thinking helps structure...
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Methodological Awareness About Deming’s 14 Points of Continuous Improvement
Every minute somewhere, someone refers to Deming’s term SMART (ie, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Based). Lesser known and frequently copied and modified we are now sharing his...
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To Become a Better Facilitator, STOP Using the First Person Singular
Today’s message is simple and quick, yet critical. STOP using the words “I” and “me”. The meeting is not about you; it is about the meeting participants. We literally have had students that manage...
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Increase Your Leadership Likeability By Strolling About and Smiling More
Some of the best methodologists are also capable of facilitating complex topics requiring pre-thought and structure. Sometimes they fall flat on the personality factor, coming off as dispassionate,...
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How to Make Thinking Visible: Three Forms of Business Argumentation Support
One prevailing reason for how to categorize input relies on common purpose. Most enterprises organize around common purpose. For example, treasury operations are organized around the purpose of...
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How to Manage “Probabilities” in the Role of Facilitator: Create Ranges
Probabilities consist of commonly held assumptions, beliefs, and outlooks about some future state or condition. Forward looking deliverables such as five-year plans and shaping curves rely exclusively...
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Twenty Popular Brain Breaks to Stimulate Your Meeting Participants
Our FAST Professional Facilitative Leadership and Facilitator Training alumni have digital rights access to thousands of Brain Breaks (or, Brakes as a double entendre). Here are twenty very common...
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How to Facilitate Olympic Scoring, Particularly for Innovation Ideas and...
Purpose To extract some consensually validated new product, process, or other innovative ideas or concepts while encouraging 100 percent participation. The following is particularly appropriate with...
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Thoughts, Words, and Deeds Provide the Foundation for Building Consensus
Even a lousy facilitator will succeed when they draw line of sight from the meeting deliverable to the quality of life of the meeting participants. When meeting output has a major impact on...
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How to Finish Meetings Faster Relies on You Fully Explaining the White Space
To effectively control your meetings to finish ahead of schedule requires effort that begins long before your meeting starts. We call the preparation period 7:59 work, as in before 8:00AM. After the...
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Quick Reference Guide to Information Technology Projects Workshop Support
Preparation Phase All effort begins with management perspective and understanding what needs to be delivered to be called a success. Some call this, “knowing what DONE looks like.” Structure Your...
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A Quick, 5-Minute Paradigm Exercise to Challenge Participants’ Group Think
We encourage professional facilitators to carry a tool box, and include some intervention devices when they need to shake up their participants. If you start hearing things like . . . Why Focus Only...
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What is Facilitative Leadership and How Do You Use It to be More Effective?
Begin by discretely understanding the two terms: ‘facilitative’ and ‘leadership’. Roughly speaking, the root for the term ‘facilitative’ means “to make easy”. Clearly, the role of a modern leader...
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Your Simple Agenda Should NOT Include Verbs, Use the Deliverable for Each Step
Do you want more meetings? Of course not. Nobody wants more meetings and yet many of us find ourselves in meetings a few dozen hours per week (or more). Why do we meet so frequently since seldom do...
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