Do Business Well

It’s almost Meeting Failure-Proof

Keep in mind that most meetings aren’t very effective as they are now run. When you get a chance to facilitate or record, it will be because your group has agreed that it is worth trying something new. You are probably going to look good no matter what you do. The mere presence of a facilitator, recorder, and group memory will do wonders. Even if you think you have done a lousy job, your group may well be impressed just because it will all be so new. Explain that you are learning and will make mistakes. Ask people to help you stay in your role and remain neutral. You are there to help them. It’s their meeting and they share the responsibility for making it a success.

If you happen to know someone who is an experienced facilitator or recorder and can observe one of the meetings, this would be an excellent boost for your first facilitation or recording job. In any event, you’ll make some mistakes and feel awkward at first. Every great professional had to begin sometime. That’s part of learning. Don’t worry; you’ll do a good job.

How to Judge Yourself in Meeting

If for some reason you can’t ask for feedback from your group or would prefer to criticize yourself at first, here are a couple of ways of evaluating your own performance:

1. After the meeting, you can fill out our meeting diagnostic sheet. It’s a way of focusing on the various parts of your job, thinking about what you did and what else you might have done.
2. If you can, videotape or audio-tape your meeting. Be certain to ask permission of your group ahead of time. Some people get very uptight about any kind of recording equipment. Tell them it’s for your own use, that you’ll stop recording any time anyone wants you to, or erase a portion or all the tape at the end of the meeting. Most of the time, that will be adequate assurance. Once you have a tape, you can go back over it at your leisure. You will discover many things about yourself. You may be embarrassed at first, but once you get over the shock of seeing and/or hearing yourself, the recording will be an extremely valuable educational tool.

Once you’re ready for feedback from others, you can encourage constructive criticism in many ways. Here are some:

1. In breaks during the meeting, and particularly at the end of the meeting, you can get together with the other half of your team, your recorder or facilitator, and, using the group memory as an aid, review critical periods of the meeting. Isolate particular segments and share with each other your positive and negative reactions about what happened; then develop alternative strategies and techniques that you might have used. This mutual criticism builds a sense of teamwork and an understanding of each other’s working style. You get an insight into how another person deals with particular problems, and together you can usually generate a large repertoire of alternatives.
2. Invite someone who has had experience with the Interaction Method to observe one of your meetings. A trained observer may notice more that could be useful to you than a group member who is involved in the content of the meeting. If you can’t find someone in your organization who has had more experience in the Interaction Method than you, you may be able to encourage one of your friends in the group serve as your coach. After each meeting, you can sit down with your coach and discuss important parts of the meeting. It’s a great help to be able to talk with an outsider who attended a meeting.
3. Then there’s what we call the “Howard Cosell Interview.” This sportscaster is noted for his pointed interviews with athletes right after a contest, “Well, Mohammed Ali, how does it feel to have lost your first major fight? Which blow was it that really got to you? Take a look at this videotape and tell our TV audience what you were thinking about at this particular moment in time.” You can do the same, we hope with a little more tact. After a meeting which you have facilitated or recorded, find willing group members and interview them one by one. Ask them pointed questions about what they liked and disliked. Get them to give you specific examples and ask for suggestions to use in future meetings. Most people will be happy to oblige you, and interviews are also good occasions for dealing with any concerns that your people may have about the Interaction Method.

1. Once in a while you can ask group members to fill out the meeting diagnostic sheets. In its present form, this questionnaire is quite long and involves some time commitment, so you can’t give it to people too often. However, it’s possible to develop your own evaluation sheet of ten to fifteen questions and zero in on skills you’re currently trying to improve. If you are working on your recording, you can make up a questionnaire asking people to rate the legibility of your writing, use of different colors, completeness of recording, etc.
2. The easiest and in some ways the most direct way to get feedback is to reserve a few minutes at the end of the meeting for evaluation. Stress your desire for constructive criticism; tell the other members of your group the more skillful you and they become, the more productive your meetings will become. At the beginning, the comments may be too general to be useful: “It was a good meeting“; “I liked having a facilitator“; “The group memory was useful.” This may be a good time to stress h^ow important the roles of group member and manager/chairperson are. The idea is for everyone to learn together even though some may never want to facilitate or record.

How to Learn with a Group Meeting

Once you get other members of your group interested in learning more about the Interaction way, constructive feedback will increase and your rate of improvement should accelerate. But we reemphasize, it’s much more effective to learn these techniques in a group.

Together with your group, set up a system for giving everyone an opportunity to record and to facilitate. One workable plan is to appoint a new facilitator and recorder for each meeting. Reserve fifteen minutes at the end of each meeting tc discuss how the meeting went and offer helpful suggestions to the facilitator and recorder. Once a few people have had a chance to experience the joys and difficulties of recording and facilitating, the level of empathy and respect for these important roles will rise quickly.

It’s a good idea to agree not to evaluate the performance of the facilitator and recorder while the meeting is in progress. It’s all right to offer suggestions about working methods and keep the facilitator and recorder in their neutral roles, but don’t say things like “I don’t like the way you’re facilitating; I think Mary did a better job last time.” As a group member, your focus should be on the subject of the meeting. If a facilitator or recorder is having trouble, he or she can call “time out,” stop the meeting, and ask for help or to be relieved. Try to keep such interruptions to a minimum. People who start off shakily may soon gain confidence and do a good job by the end of the meeting.

It’s probably wise to ask someone else to facilitate the feedback session. It’s hard to facilitate a criticism of yourself; you can no longer be neutral. Let someone else handle the evaluation sessions, perhaps the chairperson or manager.

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