Do Business Well

No matter how many books you read, how many training programs you attend, or how many meetings you run, you can always improve your facilitating and recording skills. Professionals in any field know this. Famous athletes or performers are constantly experimenting, trying new techniques, striving for perfection which they know, no matter how hard they work, no one can attain. Even if you’ve been fortunate enough to receive professional facilitation training, if you want to become a topnotch facilitator or recorder, you will have to continue learning by yourself.

Once you have finished your formal education, it is easy to forget how to learn. You forget how difficult learning can be, how hard you have to work, the occasional discomfort, the fear of failure. You may also have forgotten the sense of exhilaration that you experience when you master a new skill, when things become easy, and you can do something you couldn’t do before.

Learning a skill requires doing and thinking about doing, analyzing components and then synthesizing them into an integrated whole through un-self-conscious action. A professional athlete doesn’t go out and compete every day. Billie Jean King, for example, spends hours every day, many days a week, practicing particular tennis strokes. She understands the awkward feeling that comes over her when she becomes totally focused on one aspect of a stroke; she also knows that the self-consciousness will disappear when she concentrates on winning a game. Don’t be afraid of analysis. It’s an essential part of the learning and growth process.

Learning is a form of problem-solving, and everyone learns in a different way. Some people like to begin by understanding why a new skill works; some people like to jump in and try it; others like to see it demonstrated first. Like problem-solving in general, there is no one right way of learning. You have to try different routes until you find the one that suits you.

Since recording and facilitating involve other people, you can’t learn to facilitate by Yourself. You need a group of people, and since the purpose of the Interaction Method is to help groups do what they want to do more effectively, you have to judge your effectiveness in the last analysis by what other people say. The key to learning to facilitate and record is feedback. Until you know what other people like and dislike about how you run a meeting, you won’t know what behavior you need to change and what skills you need to learn or improve.

How to get Constructive Meeting Feedback

Feedback can be constructive or destructive, so one of the first things you need to learn is how to ask for (and give) constructive feedback:

1. Everyone needs positive and constructive negative feedback. Everyone needs encouragement, to know when he or she is doing something well. When you request feedback, ask people to tell you what they liked about what you did, before they criticize: “I really liked the way you handled Jennifer when she interrupted George, and the way you got everyone to define a problem before trying to solve it. But I felt that you didn’t keep the meeting focused after that. I got lost several times.” In their rush to criticize, people sometimes forget the things they like.
2. Ask people to comment on specific behaviors and specific times. Try to avoid general comments: “I like the meeting,” “I didn’t like the meeting.” It’s nice to be complimented, but generalizations aren’t very useful when it comes to developing skills. Get people to pinpoint their criticisms: “When I suggested we try something else, I felt you cut me off without listening to my suggestion.” “On page five on the group memory, I couldn’t read your writing.” “When Phil was talking about hiring practices, I thought you might have recorded more of what he was saying. It would have been useful later on.”
3. When someone criticizes something you did, ask what you could have done differently. a good way of turning a negative criticism into a positive suggestion: “Thank you, I wasn’t aware I was doing that. I was worried about how much time we had left, and was trying to get the group to move on to the next agenda item. What could I have done differently?” The objective is to develop a repertoire of strategies for dealing with particular situations. Don’t argue with the feedback; learn from it.
4. Make sure you understand the feedback before you respond to it. It’s easy to jump to conclusions and get defensive. If you do, feedback will stop coming. A good technique is to repeat or paraphrase the criticism to see if you got it right. “Let me see if I heard you correctly. You think that I shouldn’t have cut Joan off when she started evaluating during the brainstorming session because she stopped participating after that.” Thank people when they give you feedback, even if you don’t agree with the criticism. You need feedback to learn. You can’t afford to turn people off.
5. Don’t react too soon. Just because one person didn’t like something you did doesn’t mean you weren’t effective or should change what you do next time. Respect opinions of the individual, but check out what other people feel. It’s not that the majority viewpoint is right, but when you hear how other people see a situation, you get a better perspective. It’s hard to be sure of someone’s motivations for criticizing you. Someone may feel threatened by the attention you were getting or for some other personal reason. There is no “right” way to facilitate or record. Everyone has a different style. If you can become aware of the limitations of your personal style, you can compensate for this or at least acknowledge some its negative effects.
6. You can only work on so many things at one time. Don’t get overloaded. You’ll just get depressed and feel like giving up. Facilitating and recording can be exhausting, particularly when you are first learning. While it’s important to get feedback as soon as possible after the end of the official part of a meeting, that’s also the time you are the most tired. When you feel you’ve had enough, gently turn the feedback off. Thank people for their comments; tell them that you’ve heard enough to know what to try next time.

If you don’t have the opportunity of learning in the safe environment of a training session, how do you go about training yourself? At some point you have to get up in front of a group and begin. How can you keep from fouling up the first meeting and making a fool of yourself?

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