Meeting Presentation and Facilitation

Conducting Meetings, facilitation and public speaking are a few of the many job responsibilities that managers are required to do from time to time. Similar to a maestro conducting the orchestra, a presenter is faced with coordinating a group of attendees to be engaged and energized.  In several studies the fear of public speaking is ranked # 1!  Today’s post deals with the importance of conducting effective meetings and will be devoted to facilitation of those meetings.  We have all been to meetings or presentations that were uninteresting and perhaps boring. More than likely it was due to poor facilitation.

Have you ever encountered?

The Reader ~ the facilitator who has to read every word of their PowerPoint presentation.  Often these slides look like a dictionary with 10 bullet points per page!  Beware the BUSY slide!

The Unprepared ~ the facilitator who appears to be conducting the meeting without ever seeing his slides before. 

The Drone ~ the facilitator love to “hear the sound of his voice”.  This person speaks in a monotone and keeps saying and doing the same thing throughout his entire presentation. Often times he is reading and not making eye-contact with anyone.

The Machine gun ~ the facilitator who is so quick to tell us something he tells us nothing!  He is expert and is full of himself and not his audience!

The Policeman ~ the facilitator who will not allow discussion.  All thoughts and conversation must go through him and not be discussed by the attendees.

It is understood that the “size of the audience” has a great deal to do with the interaction of the attendees but it is within our power to set the stage for learning rather than boredom and monotony when we follow a few basic ideas as it relates to public speaking and presenting.

Facilitation, defined, is to describe any activity which makes a task for others easier.  In business, it helps ensure the design and flow of successful meetings.  A facilitator is used in a variety of group settings and describes someone who is responsible for ensuring that the meeting runs well and achieves a high degree of consensus.

The first challenge in meeting presentations is to assess the size of your audience and the design of the room.  In small meetings of less than 20 most feel that a U-shape design works best.  This allows for face to face interaction among the attendees.  You can also do variances of this with a “V” shape for victory! In larger groups, more than likely you will need to have “classroom style” where everyone is facing the front of the room.  Another choice depending on the size of the room will be “rounders” where groups of 8 – 10 attendees share a table. The use of “rounders” within segments the large group but will helps in promoting some interaction.  The greater the audience, the less total interaction is possible.

 

Some additional ideas that can help your next meeting or presentation be a huge success:

• Be sure that participants are given pre-training materials several days prior to the presentation.  This will allow the audience to be prepared with pre-reading assignments, etc…
• Depending on the size of the meeting, try to incorporate various exercises such as role-plays and practice sessions to get them out of their chairs if possible.  Obviously the larger the grouper the more difficult this becomes. 
• Be cognizant of the number of PowerPoint slides in a presentation and also the amount of information on each slide.  A general rule of thumb is to use PowerPoint as a guide.  The “grabber” should be the main gist of each slide.  This will help keep you on track and also minimize the chance of monotony, boredom and ennui that happens so often in poor presentations. As noted earlier, be particularly aware of the danger of ‘reading from your slides”.
• Allow for adequate break times including lunch and snacks.  Set the time line firmly by giving a start and end time for the break.  By saying something like, “it’s 12:05 PM, we will reconvene at 1:05 PM.  This will give an urgency to get back to the meeting and ready to go.  (When 1:05 PM comes, re-start the meeting)
• In small meeting, less than 12 attendees, take a few minutes for introductions.  Ideally, the attendees should introduce themselves to each other.  A great “ice breaker” but be aware of time restraints.
• If the meeting allows for interaction, ask “open ended” questions and listen for the group’s response.  Respect and recognize the response and encourage ideas for discussion.  Work on gaining agreement and building consensus. 
• Utilize a “parking lot” for any ideas that are off base or beyond the scope of the meeting.  This will help minimize the chance of “de-railing” the meeting.

The more excitement and enthusiasm that you share with your audience, the more energized and passionate they will be!  Meetings and presentations can have a powerful influence on a group’s results.  We want that influence to be a POSITIVE one!