10-9 Planning for a Successful Meeting

As outlined in the last section, planning is key to facilitating a successful meeting. This section will highlight the three critical areas for planning: 1) purpose and outcome, 2)meeting agenda and process, and 3) logistics.

1) Purpose and Outcome

To be effective, the group must have a clear sense not only of its overall purpose but also of the purpose of each specific meeting and how it ties into the group’s mission overall.

For example, a group organized to create funding recommendations for non-roadway funding (the mission of the collaborative group) may have a specific meeting to educate themselves about the current funding needs (meeting purpose).

In addition, it is helpful to define what outcome the group is seeking to achieve. This outcome gives the group a focus and helps them know how it will measure its success at the end.

For example,for the meeting mentioned above, the meeting outcome could be stated, “By the end of the meeting, the group will have a shared understanding about the funding revenue that needs to be generated.”

2) Agenda and Process

Once the purpose and outcomes have been defined, it is helpful to begin to plan how the group will reach that outcome.

Below is a basic agenda structure for most meetings

To reach the outcome, the facilitator breaks the task into pieces on the agenda and figures out the best method to do each piece. It can be helpful to determine whether you are wanting the group to broaden their thinking and generate ideas and perspectives (divergent) or for the group to start clustering these ideas and coming to agreement (convergent). Below are some examples as to how to match the right process for each task.

This form can be a useful guide in developing an agenda to distribute to the group.

3) Logistics

Many a good meeting has been ruined because the room was inadequate, the equipment didn’t work, or the participants did not receive notice. Attending to the logistics is a critical component of the facilitator’s work in helping the group succeed.

Much has been written about the usefulness of checklists. So we offer you the following checklists to help manage logistics for a successful meeting.

Planning and preparation BEFORE a meeting enables a facilitator the structure needed to be adaptable and responsive to the needs of the group DURING a meeting.  If we were going forward with more homework, we would now have you plan your first meeting of the group.  It would be the convening or “kick-off” meeting, and would need to include developing or confirming agreement on the operating principles or working agreements, which would be one of the desired outcomes.  It might also include the beginning of the Education Step, described in later posts.

What might be some other desired outcomes for this first meeting?

10.8 Facilitation Skills Overview

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?

10-7 The Organizing Step: Putting it all together

So just to summarize, the organization step involves helping the group agree on key organizational elements:

• What the group is going to do (purpose, outcomes, etc)
• Who is needed to do it (members, roles, etc.)
• How it will be done (structure, decision making, communication protocols)

And then documenting it in the form of working agreements (operating principles) that guide the group.

Below is an outline of how a facilitator would work to “put it all together” and approach this stage.

Have fun convening your collaborative groups!

Any comments or questions?

10-6 Working Agreements: Capturing the Organization of the Group

The final stage in the organization step is to capture the group’s organizational agreements in the form of “Working Agreements”. These can also be referred to as “Operational Principles” or “Collaboration Agreements” or any other phrase that might fit for the group and its purpose.

The facilitator will normally prepare a draft set of working agreements based on the information from the assessment and by conferring with key parties in advance of convening a first meeting.  Sometimes the draft can even contain some “place-holder” language to be filled in by the participants when they are together.  Often this draft set of agreements forms a major part of the agenda for a first “convening” meeting of the group.  It helps them to confirm how they really want to work together, and to hash out any concerns they might have about how committed others are to the process.  If there has been negativity in the media or in public meetings, discussing the working agreements is the perfect time to bring it out and talk about how to change the tone.

For example, groups often agree that even though their meetings will be open to the public, none of the participants will report to the media about what went on in the meetings.  Or they may commit not to speak about what anyone else has said during a meeting.  Sometimes the group will want to appoint one spokesperson for the group, or may even want to agree on press statements to go out after each meeting.

Negotiating the working agreements together gives the participants a sense that they really can work together and come to agreement.  It is likely to be their first agreement!

Now it is time for you to attempt to pull together the pieces of the organizational step into a draft set of working agreements for your project.  Follow the checklist below, and see what you might come up with, even though we know you don’t really know the exact process concerns that the potential participants have.

Post a draft of potential working agreements for your collaborative process group on your Student Blog Assignment as 10-6.  I will link some examples of actual working agreements, so you can see how others craft them.  These, however, are the ones actually negotiated by the parties, not the initial draft.

Here are some examples of working agreements.  Note they also give a good overview of the process design.

• CCNS Ground Rules
• LCRSF Operating Principles
• Opportunity Eugene Task Force Working Agreements

10-3 The How: Group Structure and Process

The final element in organizing a group is designing the structure that will allow the group members to work together in order to accomplish its defined purpose and achieve its outcomes.  The structure serves to give the group its form in which to operate and defines the overall organizational structure (roles, meeting times, committees) as well as the processes that will guide its decision making, conflict resolution, and operational rules.

The following two slides are examples of two very different structures for accomplishing the purpose of a group. The first relies on a committee structure with representatives serving on a core coordination team.

The second chart illustrates a typical “accordion” design with representatives of diverse interest groups coming together for planning and decision making then taking those decisions back out to their constituencies for input.

The other part of a group’s structure is defining its decision making processes and other operational agreements including its meeting ground rules, communication with the media, etc. The better the group is able to define these ahead of time, the more it will avoid problems later in the process.

If compliance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) is a concern, it should be considered in how the process is designed.  A separate post on FACA considerations will follow.  However, at this point you should be able to reflect on your project and recommend a basic structural design you think best suits the situation.  How would you advise the group to be structured?  Would there be one agreement-seeking group which meets all together all the time with no other input or meetings?  Or would there need to be some kind of central group that is representative of special sub-groups or task groups that meet between sessions of the larger group?  How often would the group(s) meet; what kind of time frame would they be looking at?  Is there a need to take parts of the process to the larger public?  Or to have public input on occasion or at every meeting?  How might that be handled?  Put together any ideas you have on how your group might be structured, and post them as Student Blog Assignment (HOMEWORK) 10-3.

Since one of the principles of collaborative agreement seeking processes is “consensus based decision-making”, we’ll explore consensus a bit in the next blog before we put all the organizational pieces together in a set of working agreements for the group.

Any questions so far?

10-2 Who: Defining Group Composition

Another element that must be addressed in the group’s organization stage is “who” will be part of the group. In a collaborative agreement seeking process, it is important to include those stakeholders who are needed to implement a solution as well as those who might have the power to block the implementation of a solution.

As this chart suggests, in pulling a group together it is important to consider not just what interests should be at the table, but who might be the best individual to represent that interest. It may be that a member of an organization is more apt to be respected or trusted by the group or is more temperamentally suited to work in a collaborative process than someone else from that same organization.  The organization needs to select its representative, but it is helpful to have relevant feedback from the neutral assessor, and to choose someone who will work well collaboratively.

Look back at your External Stakeholder Worksheet and any other information you gathered in your assessment work in your Student Assignment blog post 9-0 and related analysis, and pull together a list of the people (or at least the organizations, if you don’t know the people) whom you now would assess need to be part of this collaborative agreement seeking process, given the way the purpose has now been framed.  Post it in the Student Assignment blog post 10-2.  Post comments or questions on the topic below.

10-1 “What”: Defining the Group’s Purpose

In Blog Posts 6 to 6- 3 we explored the importance of framing the issue to include the interests of all participants.  In the organizing stage, the group builds on how the issue has been framed to make sure they are all in agreement that the purpose of the group is to resolve the defined (framed) issue. A group’s purpose should spell out what they are going to do and the outcome the group is seeking.

Here are some actual examples of different groups’ purposes:

“The purpose of the Non-Roadway Work Group is to develop recommendations for sustainable funding of non-roadway transportation, including rail, marine, aviation, transit, and on and off-road bicycle and pedestrian paths.”

“The purpose of this core group is to better understand and define the key issues surrounding population forecasting for urban growth planning and develop recommendations for addressing those issues.”

“This task force is to develop recommendations to the Eugene City Council for addressing the needs and impacts for the unhoused in the community.”

A group purpose defines what general issue a group is resolving and what outcome they are seeking to achieve. The group may well break the general issue into many parts as it goes along.  It could even decide that some of the parts are NOT within the scope of its work.  It continually clarifies the issues it is solving, but it is important that there is general agreement on what is to be solved at the outset.  This serves to give the group clear direction and focus as well as defining the outcomes it seeks to accomplish to measure its success.

Recall the range of framing possibilities suggested for the Mt. Winhootchy issue in Blog Post 6-2.  Now apply that to your project and, based on your assumed assessment of the stakeholders, and using the guidelines below, develop a framing of the issue to be solved and the potential outcome (product) desired as a result.

Post the framing of your project as a statement of purpose for the collaborative group in the 10-1 Student blog assignments.  Reply below with any questions or comments about framing the issues and creating a purpose statement for a collaborative group.

10-0 Collaborative Process Step 2: Organization

The organization stage is a critical design element in the convening phase that addresses some of the organizational issues that will enable the group to do its collaborative work together.   Let’s look back at our frame work at this stage.

The group needs to agree on key organizational elements which are:

• What it is going to do (purpose, outcomes, etc.)
• Who is going to be needed to do it (members, roles, etc.)
• How it will be done (structure, decision making, communication protocols.

The answers to these questions are documented in the form of “working agreements” or “operating principles” that guide the group’s work.  Groups who overlook this stage or don’t agree on some of the basic elements that form the group will often have trouble later in the process. After completing the assessment, the neutral facilitator should have a good idea of the key elements that will be necessary in designing the process to help the parties work well together, but it is good to include the participants in a feedback loop as the process design comes together.

Each one of the three organizational elements will be addressed in separate posts that follow.

8.2 Tips to Uncover Interests

One of the tools for uncovering interests is open ended questions. Open ended questions are those that require a response other than “yes” or “no”.  They often start with “how”, “why”, “what” or “tell me more about….”  It is important to remember that the purpose of a question is to gain a greater understanding of what someone has said, NOT to challenge their facts or their perspective.

Asking a question to deepen your understanding will require that you assume an attitude of caring and of genuine curiosity. Balancing asking questions with active listening to feedback what you are hearing will help foster the safety and trust that is important if you are asking someone to reveal important and sometimes vulnerable information. We often refer to this as the “two step”: 1) ask an open ended question and then 2) give feedback (actively listen) to let them know what you heard them say and to check out your understanding of it. This will help keep the questions from feeling like an interrogation. The slide below outlines some questions that can help in exploring interests:

As a participant in a collaborative process, it can also be helpful for you to ask these same questions of your own position. Stating your needs, wants and motivations rather than stating positions will help further the agreement seeking process as well.

Review the facts of the Winhootchy role play — what are some of the positions of the parties? What might be some of their interests underlying those positions?  Post your responses below and discuss or comment.

8.1 Exploring Interests

Parties can often get so locked in to their positions, that they “forget” or may even be unaware of the interests they are trying to satisfy.  Solving a problem collaboratively involves helping parties explore their positions to better understand each other’s underlying interests so that together, a solution can be developed that satisfies the interests of all parties.

Sometimes we find that parties with conflicting positions may actually share a common interest. Meanwhile differing interests allow for trade offs. The next section (8.2) discusses how to uncover these interests.

Questions or comments?