As a collaborative agreement seeking process moves into the organization stage and beyond, much of the work is done through a series of progressive meetings involving either the full group or sub-committees or task groups. The ability to plan and run effective meetings becomes a critical component of the success of the process. For that reason, we want to use this section to highlight some tips that contribute to effective meetings.
If you think about the best meeting you ever attended, what comes to mind? Most often, people describe things that happened during the meeting: everyone contributed, the session was focused, the facilitator kept things moving. But looking deeper, it becomes clear that good things happened DURING the meeting because a great deal of preparation was spent BEFORE the meeting. Check out this link that describes what the facilitator’s work involves.
Facilitation Handout_ The work of Facilitating
The facilitated session is a structured meeting in which the facilitator guides the participants through a series of pre-defined steps to arrive at a result that is created,understood, and accepted by all participants.
To help make it easy for a group to be successful during a meeting, it is important to consider three main areas:
The following blog posts will focus on these areas of planning for a successful meeting. Any thoughts about facilitation at this point?
Introduction to Collaborative Governance 
Title should be 10-8 not 10.8