Is it ever possible to love a meeting? As I reflected on the numerous meetings I have sat through or led, whether in school project discussions, briefings in the military or “pow-wows” in the office, I became aware that I could have preserved a lot of my sanity if I avoided the painful ones. As a facilitator, I will always be a proponent of bringing people together when it is useful and so perhaps it was one poorly run meeting too many that motivated me to finally pen my thoughts on how facilitation skills could actually elevate the whole meeting experience. Goodbye groan-worthy discussions and hello value-adding conversations.

Design every meeting around the Why

Priya Parker wrote a great book called The Art of Gathering that does a phenomenal job at challenging the very premise of every gathering we have come to accept as a given. From weddings to family dinners to board room meetings, she spotlights the phenomena where we have come to follow rituals of practice without understanding why we do what do.

rovik. reads: the art of gathering

If you are choosing to gather people, it is important for you to recognise first and foremost what you are trying to achieve with that space. The baseline template of Introduction, Agenda, Meeting and Follow-ups is not only tiresome – it is oftentimes not even appropriate. From my facilitation practice, it is useful to consider whether your purpose falls within the following non-exhaustive categories:

Purpose	Meeting Format	Meeting Principles
Generate ideas and allow creative expression	Brainstorming sessions, UnConferences, Gamified activities	Focus on divergent thinking. Judgement-free zone. Encourage whole identities.
Decide on a course of action and execute	Agenda-driven, time-boxed session	Focus on deliverables. Discussions only where pertinent. Identify the DACI upfront.
Connect with others, build trust and ask for support	Dialogue spaces, check-ins, gifts and dissent conversations	Model vulnerability. Stay open and be okay with discomfort. Acknowledge boundaries.
Establish stability and certainty	Townhalls, tribunals, disciplinary sessions	Draw on precedence and principles. Emphasise the collective. Unified voice.

Most meetings either lack a clear purpose or worse, move between purposes without adapting the space. I heard a story from a friend of a 1-1 chat she had with her manager where she was looking to ask for approval for extended leave for herself given the onset of a critical illness for her loved one. She started discussing work progress and then brought up the topic of asking for leave. She was provided with a cold resolution:

“Sure, just put it on the system and remember to get someone to cover your roles.”

In her retelling of the story to me, she shared how she felt invisible and unseen to her manager at that moment. Without knowing it, she had been looking for support at that very instance, but instead, the 1-1 was still being run as a decision-making session.

It is the job of the meeting convenor to pay attention to HOW the meeting is run, in order to address the WHY. If a meeting must move between different purposes, it takes a skilled hand to both re-centre the room and adjust the dynamic accordingly. When done well, everyone will appreciate the coherence between the content of the meeting and the format and more relevantly, goals get met.

Serve all participants, not just some

It is easy to think that the meeting only serves the principal, but frankly, it is not cost-efficient to have people be unproductive at meetings they do not need to be at. Elon Musk himself claims it is ruder to stay in a meeting where you are not gaining anything, rather than to leave.

When a meeting is convened, resist the urge to invite whole groups of people and start with the basics. Who really needs to be in this discussion for the purpose to be achieved? Who will benefit from being in this discussion and having a voice at the table? Who will gain valuable experience by being able to practice important skills such as presenting on a topic or capturing insights? Once you have identified both the WHO and the WHY, then it is important to ensure that these intents are made clear to the individuals.

I was once in a meeting, as a junior officer, that dragged on for two hours. I could not, for the love of God, understand why I was there besides the fact that my manager had shared it would be good exposure. I understood nothing, my exposure was an unimpressive flatline and I did not want to be rude to disrupt the flow of the meeting. Later during the debrief, my manager shared that he had expected me to ask clarifying questions and was disappointed that I did not speak up. I was shocked. Had I known this was the expectation for me to be in the meeting and that my manager would provide backup in case I floundered, I would have readily put my shame away. Nonetheless, the lesson was learned in a more painful way. Sharing the intention and expectation avoids such painful experiences for all members of the team and encourages purpose-driven conversations.

Deal with what is unsaid

There is a well-cited research conclusion that states that more than 70% of all communication is non-verbal. If we agree with that, it is ridiculous how much we focus on what is articulated through words rather than what is articulated through both action, emotion and most importantly, omission of words.

As a facilitator, we learn to focus on three types of language expression. These are:

1. Linguistic (what we all are comfortable with)
2. Emotional (psychological state behind the language)
3. Somatic (the body and its unlying communication)

Quite simply, it is drilling down into WHAT is being said at each meeting, both “on-the-table” and “under-the-table”. I have been in meetings before where the words being said do not match the body language and emotion behind the words. Sometimes, the words are strung together in a manner to veil a deeper emotional message.

For example,

“It is your call at the end of the day, but I think you should know that we are also dealing with the other project.”

even textually appears to be coded communication for a message intending to convey frustration and resignation towards power.

Pursed lips, distracted looks, slouched postures are also important signals of how the meeting is going. Interestingly, our bodies are the most telling out of all expressive modes as we have taken our somatic habits for granted and just play them out when we are in different states. For example, I am guilty of reclining in my chair when I feel unvalued in meetings I am in.

There are two things I like to do when I feel like the emotional and somatic forms of expression are becoming more important than the linguistic form of expression.

The first is that I bring awareness to the participants. I will use phrases like,

“I am hearing some discomfort with what is being proposed. I want to pause here because I think it is important we talk about this. Would someone be able to share what is making them uncomfortable about the proposal?”

Assuming everyone in the meeting is intentionally and purposefully brought together, it is important that everyone deals with the unsaid together. This often allows the team to work with clarity and engage directly on blockers and obstacles.

The second approach I take is to move the conversation from linguistic to emotional or somatic. I would say something like

“We have been talking for a while now. If one end of the room was “strongly agree” and the other was “strongly disagree”, walk to where you are feeling right now.”

The very act of walking to a position is an act of taking ownership of one’s point of view and you can observe whether people feel comfortable in the place they are standing in or whether they are feeling the need to be performative. You can either engage with the issue head-on or see if there are deeper issues of power and safety at play that need to be dealt with. Either way, meetings become functional rather than performative and everyone feels like they were able to actually gain from the discussion.

We can all do meetings better

A trainer once told me that

“Someone always pays the price for your learning”.

I have been grateful for the experiences I have gotten to learn these lessons but I am also committed to avoiding the same mistakes so that those around me can focus on learning even more advanced skills. I will also acknowledge that despite the declaration in the previous line, I am still guilty of some of these mistakes to this day. It is easy to fall back into what is comfortable, but I remind myself that it does not serve me and does not serve others. We can all do better in how we gather people, and hopefully, that reminds us why we love connecting with other human beings: because it means we can do powerful things together.

Do let me know your thoughts on the themes above. I wanted to write more on the topics of Establishing Rituals and Managing Power Dynamics – let me know if you are interested and I’ll queue up another post in the future!