How can you make a meeting more engaging and reach a better outcome? The 3 basic meeting principles also apply to workshops, team training and other gatherings. You may have the best intention, but if there is little motivation or traction, progress is painful. Here we explore the 3 P’s of Purposeful Gatherings to turn any dull meeting into an engaging experience. Try them at your next team meeting and see if it is more effective.
Antonia Milkop, a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach in New Zealand, shares her experience. She expands on the fundamental elements for an effective meeting and shares practical tips for new facilitators. More information is in her book, Team Spirit – The Power of Purposeful Gatherings.
Contents
The Foundation: The 3 P’s of Purposeful Gatherings
Successful team gatherings are built on three fundamental elements: Purpose, Planning, and Presence. Mastering these elements will significantly enhance your facilitation skills and the outcomes of your team sessions.
Purpose: Know the ‘Why’
If you’re not clear with why you want to gather,
the team won’t know why they’re there.
The purpose is the cornerstone of any impactful gathering. It provides direction and motivation for all participants. Here’s how to establish a clear purpose:
- Define specific outcomes: What do you want to achieve by the end of the gathering?
- Establish a theme: Create a unifying concept that ties all elements of the gathering together.
- Align with broader objectives: Ensure your gathering’s purpose supports the team’s and organisation’s overall goals.
Planning: Design it Right
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
Benjamin Franklin
Thorough planning sets the stage for a smooth and productive gathering. Consider these key aspects:
- Design a thoughtful agenda: Create a flow that maintains energy and engagement throughout the session.
- Identify necessary resources: Determine what materials, tools, or technology you’ll need.
- Prepare participants: Decide what information or tasks participants need beforehand.
- Allocate time wisely: Plan your activities with realistic timeframes, including breaks and buffer time.
Presence: Harness the Energy
What is the most important thing in the world? It is the people!
He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata!
Māori proverb
This is where your skills as a CliftonStrengths® coach truly shine. Presence involves reading the room and adjusting your approach in real time:
- Assess group dynamics: Stay attuned to participants’ engagement levels and adjust accordingly. If you know the group’s dominant CliftonStrengths®, you’ve got a head-start in designing a workshop that motivates them and brings out their best!
- Accommodate diverse personalities: Adapt your facilitation style to suit different strengths profiles and communication preferences.
- Recognize team development stages: Tailor your approach based on whether the team is newly formed or well-established.
- Leverage individual strengths: Use your CliftonStrengths® expertise to bring out the best in each team member and the collective group.
Practical Team Meeting and Workshop Tips for New Facilitators
For those new to meeting facilitation, here are some actionable strategies to enhance your effectiveness. Try them at your next team meeting.
1. Know your audience AND know yourself
Understand your own strengths as a facilitator and learn how you can aim your strengths in ways that bring value to and benefit others. At the same time, be aware of strengths that might get in your way when you’re facilitating and strategies that you can adopt to overcome these things.
2. Begin with a strengths-based icebreaker
This sets a positive tone and primes participants to think in terms of their talents. See How to choose the right team activity. Getting the warm-up done well from the very beginning will set the tone for the rest of your gathering.
3. Virtual, in-person, or hybrid facilitation?
If you’re more of an ‘in-person’ facilitator, claim this. Don’t try to do virtual workshops if it’s really not your ‘thing’ – it’s noticeable to your audience. If you need to do virtual facilitation, but don’t like the tech side of things, partner with a co-host who can take on that responsibility.
Hybrid workshops (where there’s a mix of in-person and virtual participants) need extra careful design at the onset to ensure they’re engaging for all participants. Factor in the different environments so your team meetings are meaningful for all participants.
4. Deliver what you promise
It’s frustrating the number of times I’ve attended an ‘interactive’ workshop when it hasn’t actually been interactive. For example, when only 10% of the time was saved for questions from the audience at the end. Ensure you clearly manage expectations upfront and don’t promise something you can’t deliver well. Tell your participants what they can expect and how you want them to get involved.
4. Experiment with different methods to engage participants
If you’re new to the whole facilitating gig, make sure you try out different approaches for the same activities and explore what you find works best.
5. Manage time effectively
When you’re beginning, it’s easy to either underestimate/overestimate how much time you will need for different workshop sessions. Whatever you do, stick to your time chunks in your agenda, and allow flexibility for valuable discussions. You may sometimes need to negotiate with participants if they want to continue with something at the cost of excluding something else. Make this their decision.
6. Finish well
Conclude every team meeting and workshop with clarity. Summarise key decisions, assign actions, and outline the next steps. How will you know if the group has achieved the outcomes they wanted to achieve? You may need to ask or get them to complete a feedback evaluation at the end. What call-to-action do you want your participants to take away?
Most Common Meeting Pitfalls to Avoid
Be mindful of these potential challenges:
- Overambitious agendas: Focus on quality over quantity. It’s better to thoroughly address fewer topics than to rush through many.
- Neglecting follow-through: Ensure decisions and action items from your gathering are documented and implemented.
- Overlooking group dynamics: Be prepared to address conflicts or manage dominant personalities that might derail your gathering.
- Not being your own authentic self. When you’re facilitating a group of people, it’s so important that you’re able to be YOU!
Conclusion
As CliftonStrengths® coaches venturing into team facilitation, you possess a unique advantage in understanding individual talents. By applying the principles of Purpose, Planning, and Presence, and incorporating strengths-based activities, you can create team gatherings that are not only productive but also empowering and engaging.
While I touch on some of the art required to run purposeful team gatherings, it’s up to you to discover and embrace your own authentic style – how you facilitate gatherings for others. You bring your own unique set of skills, experiences, strengths, ideas, insights, and energy to others – own this! I encourage you to get to know your style and build your own self-awareness by discovering your strengths is a great starting point. What value do your strengths bring to the world around you? What do you need to ensure you’re delivering at your best? The more you lean into your strengths the more fulfilled you are going to feel, and the more value the teams that you host gatherings for will get from you.
Any book or resource can tell you ‘what to do’ or ‘how to do it’, but only YOU know ‘why’ you do what you do. When you connect this with the what, how and who – you’ll make a huge difference in those who have the opportunity to have gatherings facilitated by you.
Remember, effective facilitation is a skill that develops over time. You’ll learn from successes and you’ll learn even more from mistakes! Embrace each opportunity to refine your approach, always keeping your strengths at the forefront. With practice and persistence, you’ll soon be conducting team meetings and gatherings that truly bring out the best in everyone involved.
Want to learn more? Grab a copy of Team Spirit
Learn more with Antonia’s book Team Spirit: The Power of Purposeful Gatherings available from multiple online sources as paperback or e-book.
Further Reading
Header Image by Joseph Mucira from Pixabay
