FULL TRANSCRIPT

00:00 – Show Opening

Are you a professional who wants to become a more effective leader? Then get ready for daily tips from the coach, with the experience and inspiration to help you succeed in any leadership situation. You’re listening to The Meeting Leadership podcast with Gordon Shepherd.

00:27 – Start Here – Podcast content starts here!

Welcome to another episode of The Meeting Leadership podcast. And I want to say, if you’re taking the time to be here, you’re supporting the idea that to be a great leader you have to know how to run a great meeting; and if you want to run a great meeting, you have to know how to become a great leader. And you come to this podcast to get the practical tips and the strategies that you need to do just that. Thank you so much for being here. And if you are a meeting facilitator veteran, or maybe you are just a rookie and you’re learning a few new tips, you’re going to get a lot out of today’s episode. Because today we’re going to tackle part three of how to be a good facilitator.

01:06 – Part 1( https://meetingleadershipinc.com/44) – Part 2 (https://meetingleadershipinc.com/51)

And just in case you’re not familiar with this three-part series, in part one, in episode 44, we tackled what a facilitator should do before a meeting. Then in part two, in episode 51, we tackled what a facilitator should do during a meeting. And now today, in part three, we’re going to do the after part, the follow-up, and really give you some tips and tricks that you can do to follow-up effectively after you have led a meeting.

01:32 – The 15 questions – https://meetingleadershipinc.com/44download

This entire series has been based on a list of 15 questions that you need to answer if you want to be a good facilitator. Now I’ve prepared that and if you’d like a copy of it, you can just go to Meetingleadershipinc.com/44download. That’s Meetingleadershipinc.com/44download.

01:53 – Use the self-assessment rating to check progress

I know that many of you took the time to give yourself a rating out of 10 to judge your current state of where you’re at as a meeting facilitator. So, for the folks, say, that gave themselves a five out of 10, I’d be really curious to know if you’ve been making any progress throughout this three-part series. And if you have, please leave a comment at the bottom of the post, get in touch with me on LinkedIn, get in touch with me through Meetingleadershipinc.com. I would love to hear about your progress.

02:21 – Question #13 – How will you hold people accountable and get them to take action?

And now let’s jump right in to question number 13 on our 15 question list. And that’s this: How will you hold people accountable and get them to take action? Well, the first recommendation that I have is at the end of every meeting you look each individual in the eye and you say, “Given what we’ve talked about today, what are you going to do when you leave the room?” And the next thing that I think you need to do is to get their answer recorded in some sort of common documentation.

02:52 – Use a running agenda for accountability –https://meetingleadershipinc.com/30

There are many facilitators who refer to this as what you’re going to call ‘a running agenda’. It’s a place where you’ve got your agenda, but also what people are supposed to do when they leave the meeting. Now often this gets done in something like a Google Doc where everybody can see it, edit it, and contribute, right? And this is also where you’re going to refer to to hold them accountable for what they said they would do. And if you would like to go way beyond a Google Doc, then check out episode 30 on The Meeting Leadership podcast. It’s called ‘Effective Meeting Agenda Software That Gets Results’. And that’s with expert Ashley Janssen, where she talks about her software called Tadum.

03:27 – Question #14 – What will your follow-up procedure be?

Now let’s move on to question number 14 which is this: What will your follow-up procedure be? Well, I think for many facilitators, they’re in that mode where they kind of make up their notes and push send on a mass email, and that is an absolute disaster. Listen, we all know that our email inboxes are packed, and people’s bandwidth is really, really thin. So when you’re doing this, don’t be surprised that the email is not getting opened, people are showing up at the next meeting and they’re really not taking any action.So my suggestion is this; it’s a little bit more time consuming, but you want to figure out what is the individual modality of each person on your team. So I often break this down by going by age. So if a young person, for example, wants to be corresponded with through text, then you send them a text. If you’ve got someone else who likes email, that’s great. Maybe you’ve got an older person on your team who really appreciates in-person conversations. As a facilitator it may sound daunting, but the trust that you will earn by really connecting with them, and the accountability that you will put into the situation, will pay off in spades.

04:35 – Question #15 – Why is it important to tell your boss that you lead a great meeting?

And finally we come to question number 15 which is: Why is it important to tell your boss that you led a great meeting? Well, here’s the thing. Changing meeting culture is tough. So if you’ve made the effort to up your facilitation skills, then I think it’s really worth making sure that as many people know about it as possible. Because really, if you have a great meeting, then maybe that will influence your boss to have a better meeting as well. And when this starts to happen, meeting after meeting after meeting, throughout your entire organization, well then the ripple effect will be felt then by your customers, and your community, and it is a win/win overall.

So I really appreciate that you’re taking the time to up your facilitation skills because that’s the vision of where I think this type of effort can go.

05:23 – Episode Recap

And now let me take a moment to recap the three questions from today’s episode. Question number 13: How will you hold people accountable and get them to take action? Question number 14: What will your follow-up procedure be? And question number 15: Why is it important to tell your boss that you led a great meeting?

05:44 – Part 1( https://meetingleadershipinc.com/44) – Part 2 (https://meetingleadershipinc.com/51)

And now that we’ve come to the end of part three, that concludes our mini training about how to be a good facilitator. Now if you’d like to make sure you go back and get part one, just go to Meetingleadershipinc.com/44; and of course you can go get part two by going to Meetingleadershipinc.com/51. And if you have found any part of this mini training to be of benefit, to help you improve as a facilitator, I would love to hear from you. Just send an email to info@meetingleadershipinc.com, or get in touch with me through LinkedIn, or even leave a comment right at the bottom of the post for this episode. It will be great to hear that you are taking action. 

06:26 – Meeting Leadership Academy –https://meetingleadershipinc.com/academy

And if you’d like to learn even more about how to be a good facilitator, then check out the courses on The Meeting Leadership Academy. Great live training, great online training options, and it’s all there by visiting Meetingleadershipinc.com/academy.

And as always, thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you tomorrow on The Meeting Leadership podcast.

06:48 – Podcast Outro

Thanks for listening to The Meeting Leadership podcast. Be sure to subscribe for more strategies to help you become an outstanding leader. And don’t forget to rate and review so we can bring you fresh content every day. We’ll see you tomorrow, right here on The Meeting Leadership podcast.