The Project Meeting Facilitator: Facilitation Skills to Make the Most of Project Meetings

Chapter 3. Facilitation Tools for Keeping Meetings on Target

The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.

—JOSEPH JOUBERT, French essayist and moralist (1754–1824)

THERE ARE SOME BASIC TOOLS every project meeting facilitator should have in his or her tool bag to help meetings flow smoothly. Most of these tools you've seen used—both effectively and ineffectively—in meetings throughout your career. Mentally rewind to some of those experiences. Remember the meeting whose agenda was briefly stated and forgotten? What was the point? And what about those ground rules? It took thirty minutes to get agreement on them, and they weren't even relevant to the work at hand. Then there are all those tasks that folks agreed to do ...