Welcome to Magical Meetings Stories, a series where I chat with professional facilitators, meeting practitioners, leaders, and CEOs across industries about their meeting culture. We dive deep into a specific magical meeting they’ve run, including their approach to facilitation design, and their tips and tricks for running meetings people thrive in. 

Today’s story is with Alison Coward, founder of Bracket–a company that works with a diverse range of clients to help them discover the perfect balance between team creativity, collaboration and productivity. Bracket’s services include team workshops, a team culture program, workshop design and facilitation, and an effective workshop masterclass. Prior to Bracket, Alison spent the first part of her career working in, leading, and facilitating teams in creative organizations. She is the author of “A Pocket Guide to Effective Workshops” and a keynote speaker, speaking at a range of conferences including Mind The Product, Business of Software and Google Sprint Conf. She has also delivered guest lectures at various academic institutions including the University of the Arts London, Cambridge University and the University for the Creative Arts.

I spoke with Alison about a meeting template she designed called “Big Picture Thinking Workshop,” the purpose of the meeting, what it helped accomplish, and why it was so powerful.

“What I want for this kind of workshop is that it becomes a natural way of thinking for teams.” -Alison Coward

Taking a Step Back

The Big Picture Thinking Workshop is a meeting template Alison originally created to encourage strategic thinking within the clients and teams she works with – to take a step back from the busyness of their day-to-day and look at the bigger picture. The meeting serves as an opportunity to reconnect on a higher level, to look at where the team is going and what they’ve learned. Because she works with so many different types of companies (from startups to Fortune 500 brands), each Big Picture Thinking Workshop is different. However, her template influences each workshop, and she then encourages teams to do the exercise regularly. 

Alison explained that the workshop was designed to ensure teams were thinking and working together with a holistic view–remembering to take a step back, and then bring that holistic view back into granular detail. In one client example, Alison noted that the workshop was extremely helpful for the company because it reframed what they do from the perspective of looking inward. It was held as part of what she calls an “away day” or company offsite, which she recommends.

“So that’s why I think this is just such a key session that teams would benefit from doing regularly as an exercise, just as almost like a breath of fresh air, but then connecting that back into the work. So I call it a big picture thinking session…the whole point was really about getting them to think bigger and to think forward rather than the granularity of what they were doing.”

Let’s take a closer look at Alison’s process to learn what made this meeting magical.

The Meeting

Pre-Meeting Prep

Prior to the workshop, Alison outlines a couple of steps for the team to take. These should be done by the meeting organizer or facilitator:

• Location: Choose somewhere you can stick paper to walls and with space to form small working groups
• Send invites to your team and set a date
• Get materials and tools for the group. This will vary based on the team and needs but some ideas include:
  • Sticky notes
  • Pen or sharpies
  • Flip chart markers, pad and stand
  • Sticky tack
  • Paper and flashcards
• Plan out the workshop:
  • Decide how long each session and topic should be 
  • Add in time for breaks
  • For breakout group exercises, plan who will work together to ensure everyone mixes
  • Adapt the outline for your team/project as necessary
  • Schedule time to write a follow-up of the session afterward

Exercise

Alison explained these meetings have typically been held in person (pre-pandemic) due to the collaborative nature of the workshop. She hasn’t personally run one virtually but notes it could still be effective online. There’s no set number of people (or specific titles) necessary, as it will vary based on organization or team, but Alison has hosted meetings with teams as small as 6 and as large as 25-30 participants. The meeting can last anywhere from two hours to half a day (or more), depending on the size of the team and how you want to structure it. 

Alison’s workshops typically cover the below discussion topics. These can be done in smaller breakout groups, and then takeaways and learnings at each point can be shared with the broader team for feedback and further discussion. It’s important to note, she says, that the structure should be adapted to fit the needs of each unique team. Not all sections will be relevant to everyone and it may not be necessary to follow this exactly, but rather should be used as a directional guide. The timing for each portion can and should be adjusted based on needs as well. The most important aspect is to ensure the expectation is that something will come out of this and to not just leave ideas in the meeting with no action following.

• Largest challenges and successes of the past year (or decided upon time period)
• Biggest lessons and insights learned about the business
• Industry trends: other brands or people that are interesting and worth following
• Wishlist: if there were to be unlimited time, money and resources
• Actions and next steps: prioritize group takeaways and insights for actionable next steps 

You can find more information on Alison’s website here.

After the workshop, the meeting facilitator or organizer should gather and document all content from the session and send a follow-up email the day after the workshop including actions agreed upon from the final exercise along with a note for participants to respond with any further thoughts or questions.

Outcomes and Deliverables

Alison explains the main outputs and deliverables of this meeting are the micro-action items and next steps from the last step of the exercise – asking the participants to discuss the biggest insight from the session, what they should focus on as a team, and what action items individuals can take as a result of the session. The micro-actions could be tasks, having another session, or connecting with someone on another team about a topic (for example). “There always has to be something tangible that comes out of it..and then using that as the springboard for the next step,” she says. 

As mentioned above, the meeting facilitator (Alison in this case, but whoever is leading or facilitating the meeting) would be responsible for documenting, organizing, and outlining the action items and next steps and following up with them, and keeping the team accountable for their individual action items.

Benefits and Risks

I asked Alison what makes this meeting unique. She said the first thing that came to mind is that it’s a meeting that every team could benefit from. It’s also an entry point for teams that have a need for it but don’t know quite where to start. That’s where the true value lies. 

We also discussed potential pitfalls and risks of this meeting. She noted there’s a risk in no follow-up or resulting action happening after; that no change comes out of it: 

“That it just becomes a nice discussion and it’s a nice jolly for everybody. And I think there is value in getting people to think differently, but if you do too many of these kinds of sessions and it doesn’t lead to action, then people are just like, ‘It’s a waste of time,’” she said.

Looking Ahead

We ended our conversation by discussing what she would do with this meeting if she were to be really bold and/or had unlimited resources. Alison explained she would want to turn it into something bigger than a workshop: 

“This is going to sound so ironic. I wouldn’t run this as a workshop, it would be a program. Really what I’d want to do with this is, how do you support a team to become more strategic in their outlook? The thing is the entry point is often the workshop because of budgets, time, people want a taste of it. Especially as I say, especially if teams haven’t done this kind of thinking before, they may not buy into the idea of why it might be relevant to stretch it out over a period of time rather than doing it in a condensed session. And it might be a series of smaller workshops, but with work in between and conversation and discussion and a bit more interaction with the team in between. But you’re still using facilitation skills, heavily still using facilitation skills but not confining it to that. What I want for this kind of workshop is that it becomes a natural way of thinking for teams.”

To learn more about Alison’s approach to facilitation, meeting design, coaching and workshops, see some of her blog posts below:

The post Big Picture Thinking Workshop appeared first on Voltage Control.

Welcome to Magical Meetings Stories, a series where I chat with professional facilitators, meeting practitioners, leaders, and CEOs across industries about their meeting culture. We dive deep into a specific magical meeting they’ve run, including their approach to facilitation design, and their tips and tricks for running meetings people thrive in. 

Today’s story is with Taylor Cone, Founder & CEO of Lightshed – an innovation, leadership, and design firm specializing in accelerating product development through facilitated Design Sprints and coaching. Lightshed also offers collaboration design engagements to help teams work together most effectively, productively, and creatively. Taylor also co-founded Compa, a tool to make compensation fair and competitive for everyone. And he serves as the Director of Innovation Experience at Delve, a design and innovation consultancy. 

Taylor’s other experience highlights include teaching and coaching at the Stanford d.school, receiving multiple patents for his engineering work, and guiding whitewater rafting trips across the Western U.S. for the last 10 years.

I spoke with Taylor about a meeting he designed called Collaboration Design Kickoff, the purpose of the meeting, what makes it possible, and why it’s so powerful.

“I think that one of the reasons that great meetings are great is that intention is brought, and how we work together is a big part of what we need to focus on.” -Taylor Cone

The Need for Intention

The Collaboration Design Kickoff meetings were originally prompted when Taylor noticed that people were not talking together or making decisions in productive ways during their regular meetings. He identified there was clearly a better way to do things. He created the Collaboration Design Kickoff with the focus to place intention on the role of collaboration design. The purpose of the meeting is “making collaboration design an explicit emphasis as opposed to just something we either don’t even think about, or just hope will magically happen.”

“I think that one of the reasons that great meetings are great is that intention is brought, and how we work together is a big part of what we need to focus on,” he further explained.

The Collaboration Design Kickoff meetings–originally designed for Taylor’s clients, which are often large teams at single companies–are relatively unique compared to our other Magical Meeting stories. These meetings take place prior to other meetings (or at the beginning), to understand how all participants want to intentionally work together during the meeting that follows. For example, this “pre-meeting” could be about determining and defining roles and responsibilities for the next meeting or identifying how each participant best works and learns in order to have the most productive meeting possible. This meeting can be applied to various meeting types – such as before a workshop, retrospective, Design Sprint, etc. 

Let’s take a closer look at Taylor’s process to learn what makes these meetings magical.

The Meeting

Pre-Meeting Prep

At the beginning of the meeting, Taylor highlights the importance of laying a foundation of psychological safety–or the importance of creating an environment where everyone feels safe to share their thoughts freely. Introductions, warm-ups, and other activities help foster a level of connection so that everyone can be honest with each other. “If people aren’t honest about the things that they need or struggle within collaboration, then there’s no reason to have a meeting like this because you’re just not going to get where you need to go,” he explained.

Exercise

The Logistics: These meeting sessions were held in person in the past, but are now held remotely on Zoom. The number of participants ranges from 10-25 people, with the sweet spot around 15 for Taylor’s purposes. In his experiences, everyone participating is on the same broader team but works together in a cross-functional capacity. Since the Collaboration Design Kickoff sessions can be held prior to various types of meetings, the cadence depends on the meeting following, but holding them at least once a month or once a quarter is a good benchmark.

Attendees: We discussed who should attend and Taylor highlighted that it’s more about the mindset of those in the room vs. their status: “The value is really in the mindset of the people in the room and less about who they are or what their roles and titles are and that they’re open to it, that they’re excited about it. A lot of times after a Sprint or a workshop, people are saying, ‘Where do we go from here? How do we keep this forward?’ I’ll say, ‘Follow the energy. Who in that session were most enthusiastic about what we were doing, the ideas, and the process? Find that person and have them move this thing forward.’ It doesn’t matter what role they’re in, it doesn’t matter whether it’s on their roadmap or not, have them do it because that’s where the energy is. I have that same philosophy a lot about who can be in the room, especially when it’s the first experience because that’s how many people are open to it, that is sort of innovators themselves, have that kind of archetype, that’s what’s going to make the meeting stick.”

Intention Setting: After the introductions and warm-up activities, the team begins with intention setting. An example of this is asking the participants and discussing “What’s one thing you want to walk away with at the end of our time together, and one thing that you will do to ensure that that happens?” Taylor explains the second part of the question is especially important, as it’s common to ask “What do you want to get out of this meeting?” but less common to discuss what will actually be done to make sure that happens. “I think that intention setting is really important and there’s some pretty interesting psychology on when we set intentions, when we agree to things, when we set norms or when we set expectations, we’re more likely to actually follow through on them, and so that’s woven in as well,” he says.

Discovery Work: The group then dives into what Taylor calls “discovery work.” This is the meat of the meeting and typically done in breakout groups of 3-5 participants – where everyone reflects and discusses with each other what each person wants and needs in collaboration, how they want to work together, and what they want outcomes to be. Next, Taylor explained that the groups feed that into a “definition ideation prototyping and test design of how do we implement some of these things that we’ve just said about how we want to work together, and how do we learn in a week, after we’ve tried it or in a month after we’ve tried it, and how do we course correct from there? Structurally it was very very much a plug-and-play design thinking process, just where the input was the team, as opposed to a product or service.” Then the breakout groups come back together in the full group to share out ideas and learnings and get feedback from everyone else. Having smaller breakout groups helps make sure that everyone can be heard.

Reflection and Refraction: Taylor likes to end the meetings with what he calls a “reflection and refraction.” The reflection involves each participant looking back at the session and discussing what the most influential, memorable, or transformative moment was for them. The refraction is looking ahead and thinking about how things can be different based on experience. “That nice one-two punch at the end of looking back and just recapping the experience we had, crystallizing that, but then also looking ahead and turning that into some sort of intention I found has been really powerful for participants, really helpful for me to see how those things sort of align,” Taylor said.

Roles and Responsibilities: Taylor says he tries to level everyone and have all participants show up in the same way. Sometimes there are assigned discussion leaders or facilitators, but he likes the idea of everyone being equal participants whenever possible.

Ground Rules: Expanding upon everyone being equal, Taylor also says one of the ground rules is that there’s no right or wrong answer: “It’s important that no person’s perspective or experience is any more or less true than anyone else’s, because we are all humans on this team, in this meeting. So, we all have our experiences, and being real about what those experiences are is just really freaking important. We obviously talk a lot about psychological safety these days as the foundation of creativity and trusting teams and productivity in many ways. I think that is even more foundational when you’re talking directly about the team itself and the collaboration itself.”

Outcomes and Deliverables

The main outcomes from holding a Collaboration Design Kickoff session are often defining the specific roles that people are going to play in the upcoming meeting, as well as building awareness of individual and group needs–both while in collaboration and in meetings. For example, it might be identified that one person is a visual thinker whereas someone else is a verbal thinker. Recognizing this upfront gives the group the opportunity to decide how to approach it. Deliverables will vary based on the meeting that will follow. One such example Taylor cited was a MURAL board with frameworks filled out that everyone could reference for themselves and each other. Regardless of what the deliverables are, the takeaway is that these roles, items, and ideas for the meeting are identified prior to it, resulting in more efficiency and productivity during the upcoming meeting itself.

Tools

There are a few tools Taylor uses to create magic and connection in his meeting:

• Zoom – Fosters connection using conversation, chats, and breakout sessions.
• MURAL – Digital workspace for virtual collaboration.
• Keynote or Google Slides – Presentation software applications.

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Reflecting on Collaboration Design Kickoffs

I asked Taylor what makes these meetings possible. He said having participants that are curious and open to trying something new, and who also might have felt there’s a better way to approach the meeting but haven’t tried yet. Laying the foundation groundwork upfront by having a Collaboration Design Kickoff session as a first step will most likely unlock better outcomes in any following meetings.

We also discussed what makes these meetings unique, what he’s most proud of, and any potential pitfalls or risks. 

Taylor said the meeting is unique because “it shines a light on things that nobody talks about. It needs to be blunt and exaggerated. It gives an opportunity for people to talk about what they really want to talk about.” He said he’s most proud of taking the step to elevate collaboration design to the level it deserves and having clients and coworkers validate the need for it. “And I am proud that that happened and also that it has been successful so far and that people seem to see the value in it and seem to really be hungry for it,” he said. The potential pitfalls are surfacing things that are bigger or deeper than there’s time or scope for: “I think long-term, that’s probably a good thing, but it might put some things out there that could cause some short-term issues.”

Looking Ahead

We ended our conversation chatting about where Taylor sees the opportunity for this meeting and what he would do next if he were to be really bold. He says, “If I were really, really bold, I would probably just make this the one thing that I do. Just on a personal level, it would be the explicit singular focus of my business. I think from a more conceptual level, some of it is just going deeper. Bringing more of the coaching background and deepening the conversations around what’s really going on. And bringing talking about topics like nonviolent communication. How do we change the way we talk to each other at work? And I think just going deeper on the types of things we talk about and making it almost like a more comprehensive process.”

Do you have a magical meeting story to share?

We want to hear about your wizardry and how you’re changing the meeting culture in your organization/industry. Submit your story below:

The post Collaboration Design Kickoff appeared first on Voltage Control.

Welcome to Magical Meetings Stories, a series where I chat with professional facilitators, meeting practitioners, leaders, and CEOs across industries about their meeting culture. We dive deep into a specific magical meeting they’ve run, including their approach to facilitation design, and their tips and tricks for running meetings people thrive in. 

Today’s story is with Johannes Petereit, Ph.D. Student and graduate coordinator at the German Research Center for GeoSciences (also known as GFZ Potsdam, which is the national research center for Earth Sciences in Germany). He started as a Ph.D. student in 2015 and is currently in the final stages of finishing his thesis. Since the beginning of 2020, Johannes has been responsible for building and coordinating the graduate program of the institute, where he organizes and conducts trainings for graduate students. I spoke with Johannes about a meeting for other trainers facilitators in the natural sciences field he participates in called Train Together Forever, what prompted it, and what makes it unique.

“We want to change the way science is done.” -Johannes Petereit

Tribe Mentality

Train Together Forever is made up of a group of trainers, facilitators, educators, and coaches who meet each week to discuss various ways to conduct and facilitate online trainings and try out online tools (such as MURAL and Slido). The trainings mostly pertain to the natural sciences field, as most of the group members have a natural sciences background. The meeting was prompted by the first COVID-19 lockdown in Germany as an initiative to promote online training skills and learn from others in the field, as no meetings, events, or conferences were happening in person. 

According to Johannes, a big part of the meeting’s purpose is to create a space for scientists, trainers, and educators to collaborate with fellow members of their field about approaches to training. “We want to change the way science is done at the moment in academia because it’s a somewhat toxic environment for many who are in this field. I would say it’s a tribe, and we come together to move forward into the same direction, which we defined for us.” He noted there are a lot of scientists that want to solve problems, but having a way to collaborate with each other positively in order to come up with answers to the big questions isn’t happening very often (but should be). 

The meeting was originally designed by Alexander Schiller–a professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Jena in Germany–but it has since expanded to be community-run. At the time and as a result of the lockdown, Alexander started offering a short workshop on interactive training and facilitation online for free and started inviting people from his network.  Participants had the option to pay what they wanted. The group gained momentum and developed into a safe space for others to learn more about online training, where everyone was a beginner (aside from Alexander and a few of his colleagues) and had the chance to test out online training tools and share knowledge. “We were sharing and learning together and improving, giving each other feedback, but all in a positive way,” Johannes explained.

Johannes said the meeting has evolved into a community, which he attributes to a reason for its success.“We are somewhat of a tribe. That’s actually the thing that makes this meeting magical for me, because most of us, we have never met in person, but somehow we know each other.” The group is currently working on several projects, including a workshop curriculum for trainers who want to be trainers in the natural sciences field, a small conference for members of the natural sciences field, and an upcoming website. 

Let’s take a closer look at Johannes and Alexander’s process to learn what made this meeting magical.

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The Meeting

Pre-Meeting Prep

Two-three members of the group gather to brainstorm, prep, and gain early feedback on ideas and topics to discuss in the meeting. The roles of the meeting facilitator and leader are on a volunteer, rotating basis and they both change each week. Whichever team member is leading that week’s meeting will send out the calendar invite and plan the meeting agenda, which varies but has included a mix of presentation slides, MURALs, new tools, and online activities. A calendar invitation with a Zoom link is always sent before the meeting, and the information is cross-posted on Slack and sent via email. 

Exercise

Train Together Forever is held on Zoom every Thursday at 5 PM CET for about two hours. There are typically around eight attendees but attendance varies and sometimes there are as many as 15 participants. The group is made up of scientists, trainers, and educators in the natural sciences field. One of the ground rules is that everyone is welcome – the group fosters an inclusive culture and wants to ensure they are providing a safe space where people feel comfortable coming to. 

Roles and Responsibilities: Johannes explained that not one single person is in charge of the group: “We are in it all together and we are deciding together and trying to move forward together.” There is, however, the rotating meeting facilitator/leader who determines the meeting agenda. The meeting facilitator for each week is selected at the end of the previous week’s meeting, on a volunteer basis.

Meeting Format: The meeting typically starts with an informal check-in, where attendees catch up and socialize. Then the facilitator will segway into calling the meeting to order and start what they have planned for the week. The bulk of the meeting lasts for about one hour and 45 minutes, Johannes said. The last ten minutes are spent discussing what’s next, including determining the following week’s facilitator. 

Purposefully Casual: This informal meeting structure was prompted by new attendees joining every week, and everyone taking turns presenting. Everyone has different presentation styles and ideas, and because of this, it sparked an emphasis on trying new things and bringing new concepts to the meetings, Johannes explained. 

Outputs and Results

Johannes and I discussed the main outputs and results produced by the Train Together Forever meetings. “The output is usually improving existing concepts, workshop concepts, because we are trying them out in this workshop and then getting feedback or just training. It’s also a training space, so we have a lot of newbies and they have a safe space to try things out before they have the real workshop afterwards.” Other outcomes are additional meetings that have evolved (such as a workshop curriculum to get certified as a scientist trainer), the website, and the upcoming online conference.

Tools

There are a few tools Johannes and team use to create magic and connection in the Train Forever Together meeting:

• Zoom – Fosters connection using conversation, chats, and breakout sessions.
• MURAL – Digital workspace for virtual collaboration.
• Slido – Q&A polling platform for meetings and events.

Opportunities and Reflection

I asked Johannes what makes this meeting unique, and he again highlighted the tribe and community aspects: “That it’s organic. That it’s not an obligation. This tribe part I was talking earlier about, that a community evolved out of it. It’s not that it’s just meeting the purpose of learning or something like that. It’s really that there is a culture and the community that has evolved out of it and projects that are started together in subgroups or altogether.”

We also discussed what makes him most proud of these meetings. Johannes identified the friendships that have evolved out of it, especially during a pandemic and lockdown. He’s proud that the group is able to do life online – not in a “gaming, being sucked into an online game world kind of way,” but in a new and exciting way, one where everyone is always trying to improve and generate new ideas.

We ended our conversation on the topic of opportunity for improvement. In Johannes’ ideal world, he would like to be liberated from the traditional virtual meeting setup (sitting at the computer) and instead be able to move around while having the meeting while also doing other activities, such as cooking. An interesting idea he mentioned was if a drone had a computer screen attached to it and could follow someone around, it would allow people to participate in the meeting while also encouraging movement and activity. “This would also change the dynamic of a lot of those meetings,” he said.

Do you have a magical meeting story to share?

We want to hear about your wizardry and how you’re changing the meeting culture in your organization/industry. Submit your story below:

The post Train Together Forever appeared first on Voltage Control.

Welcome to Magical Meetings Stories, a series where I chat with professional facilitators, meeting practitioners, leaders, and CEOs across industries about their meeting culture. We dive deep into a specific Magical Meeting they’ve run, including their approach to facilitation design, and their tips and tricks for running meetings people thrive in. 

Today’s story is with Kellee Franklin, an innovative and integrative thinker, creative change agent and corporate strategist, executive advisor, and entrepreneurial-minded business leader and educator. She has been recognized for delivering sustainable business strategy and IT/digital transformation, leveraging Big Data to drive innovation, designing new and inventive ways of performing business, and achieving actionable results through using human-centered design processes and best-in-class management consultant strategies. She is also the founder of Mindful Innovation Labs. Kellee also received a PhD in Human Development with an emphasis in Adult Learning and Organizational Behavior from Virginia Tech.

In our discussion, Kellee reflects on a specific 10 meeting series she ran shortly before the pandemic lockdown. She dives into what drove the meeting design and why her unique approach was successful.

“I think what drove the design of that meeting, which really has driven the design of the vast majority of the meetings that I have with clients, is just my fundamental belief in adult learning principles, which I don’t think get communicated as often as they should.” -Kellee M. Franklin

The Importance of Meeting Design

Kellee is a big believer in spending a lot of time upfront in meeting design, because she isn’t the biggest fan of meetings. This thinking is also applied when she coaches executives, where the emphasis is placed on designing meetings. 

Her Team-Centered Meetings are an ongoing approach she uses with teams, both virtually and in person. Let’s take a closer look at Kellee’s process for making this specific Team-Centered Meeting magical.

The Meeting 

During this specific Team-Centered Meeting, Kellee was responsible for navigating 15 design teams of 32 nationalities through a design thinking process. At the end of it, each team was going to pitch a product. There was a series of 10 meetings and she met with each individual team weekly for only 30 minutes. “Throughout the week, these design teams were meeting together and they were also getting content and having access to clients and working collaboratively. But their time with me was relatively limited. So, we had to make the most use of our time together,” she explains.

Team-Centered Meeting Driver 

Kellee’s fundamental belief in adult learning principles are what drove the design of this meeting, and the design of many of her other meetings and engagements. She believes adult learning principles don’t get communicated as often as they should. She explains the aspects of adult learning, which are differentiated from how children learn: “Some of the things that I deeply believe in are that adults have a higher sense of self-direction and motivation. They have life experience and a drive for facilitating learning. They have a focus on achieving goals. They have a need to know how the information that they’re receiving is relevant to what they’re working towards. They have a need to have things that are practical. They’re open to help and mentorship. And they are open to modern forms of learning. And they want to be able to choose how they learn.”

Taking these beliefs and principles into account prompted Kellee to ask herself: “How was I going to design these meetings in a manner that was going to facilitate the most effective outcomes for them?”

The Exercise

When each team came into the room for their weekly meeting, they had goals that they were working towards for that week. First, they filled in a dashboard and Kellee then put the dashboard on a whiteboard for everyone to see. Throughout the day, she was meeting with all 15 teams. The teams filled in the following on their dashboard:

• The name of their team
• Each of the three or four goals they had
• The stage they were at with those goals (identified by red, yellow or green)
• Any questions they had or resources they needed

After the dashboard was visualized on the whiteboard, Kellee put the responsibility back on the teams to determine how to best spend their next 30 minutes together, based on what the team wanted to prioritize, tackle and focus on. “And that really…is an adult learning principle, rather than me driving the meeting, it allowed the design team to drive the meeting.”

By the end of the day, all teams’ information was in the dashboard and on the whiteboard. She would take a photo of the whiteboard and send it out to everyone. This way, each of the teams could see how one another was working. Even though the 15 teams weren’t working all together, it gave them an opportunity to learn from each other.

A Unique, Successful Approach

Kellee explains that it was a little awkward at first for the design team, because “they were accustomed to having the person in charge, if you will, run the meeting. And this was kind of a role reversal for them.” But in the end, this approach was truly what made it so successful. “As we moved and progressed through the process, they really, really appreciated and they would start to come to the meeting, much more organized, recognizing that they only have 30 minutes with me and that they needed to know what specific questions that they needed to address and how were they going to use the best use of their time.”

She elaborates on the process further: “They would come in with, as we progressed, things written down or part of their deliverables that they wanted to show me to get feedback on. And it was really a lovely way to see them develop and grow throughout this progress. So again, rather than me dictating to them, it was an opportunity to really have them showcase their work. And I have to tell you, every team came in with different questions and a different idea of how they were going to utilize my time.”

Role of the Facilitator

Throughout her engagements–both in this meeting series and her work in general–Kellee sees her responsibility as the facilitator to really think about the purpose at hand when designing the meeting. “I think that’s our role as a facilitator of learning,” she says. These are some of the questions she utilizes to determine meeting design:

• What are the objectives of the meeting?
• How can we design it in a way that everyone has the opportunity to feel seen?
• How can we design it in a way that everyone has the opportunity to feel heard?

Advice

When reflecting on the Team-Centered Meeting series, Kelle’s main recommendation for others is to think about and utilize the adult learning principles. Kellee has made it a point to incorporate them in her work and the feedback has been extremely positive. “I have more people tell me, ‘Gosh, if I had been exposed to those principles earlier in my career, I would do meetings, I would do presentations so differently than I’ve done throughout my entire career.’”

Applying these principles throughout her work has helped Kellee and the teams she works with drive more efficient and effective outcomes, something everyone could benefit from.

Do you have your own Magical Meeting Story to tell?

We’d love to hear your wizardry! Share your story with us here.

The post Team-Centered Meeting appeared first on Voltage Control.