The A-Z of Successful Meetings

During my life in the corporate world, like most people, I spent alot of time in meetings. Often these achieved little and seemed to be devices to fill up the days of managers who wanted to feel important. Once I got involved in business improvement I joined the campaign to improve the meetings experience across the organisation.

Moving into consultancy work has allowed me to carry on my crusade for better meetings. I’ve summarised my ideas in this series of blog posts covering the whole alphabet. I’ll be covering a different letter each week, so watch this space!

Your ATTENTION please!

I was highly delighted to read that the new UK Prime Minister David Cameron has banned mobile phones and the like from Cabinet meetings.

Like most people I find a mobile phone a great way to keep in touch but as a facilitator I know what a nuisance they can be in meetings. They distract people, stop people giving their all to the discussion and can throw the agenda right off track. Worse in my opinion is the Crackberry, where the owner can’t resist the temptation to check their email and starts pressing buttons under the table where they think they can’t be seen!

What does a facilitator do?

A question that regularly arises is “What does a facilitator do?” which is a very pertinent question, especially in a business context. I will now try and provide a little more clarity on what, in my experience, good facilitators should do.

As clear as mud!! Or what does a facilitator do?

There has been a really interesting thread on the Professional Facilitators Network on LinkedIn about “How to explain what you do“.  Some of the ideas have been very well thought out and have made me think about my elevator pitch and how to ‘sell’ facilitation.