What I’m doing differently in meetings this year

Do you facilitate team meetings? If so, is there anything you want to do differently this school year in regards to how you design and facilitate meetings?

Here’s what I’m doing differently with the meetings I lead this school year:

• I’m going to bring my leadership team into the planning and design of our end of month team meetings. I’ll solicit their input on the content and topics, and ask them to facilitate portions here and there. Yes, this is leadership distribution, and also it’ll lighten my load a bit.
• I’m going to determine a few meeting routines that we can cycle through. For example, I facilitate our presenter team meetings each month. There are some structures that always generate deep learning and I’m going to put those on rotation. Every single meeting doesn’t need to be different, in fact, routine is good for learning.
• I’m going to sketch out a year-long map of all the meetings I facilitate. I’ll remind myself that I am not wed to this map (I can be responsive to learning needs that arise) but having a map will provide a vision for what we’re doing and where we’re headed, and it’ll relieve the mental gymnastics I go through sometimes when there’s a meeting coming up and I’m not sure what we’ll do.

My intention with these new approaches is to make my design and facilitation a little more easeful. Perhaps a little more efficient.

Before school starts, or while it’s ramping up, take some time to consider the following prompts:

• If you could wave a magic wand and some challenging aspects of the meetings you design and facilitate would disappear, which would those be?
• Of those challenging aspects, which do you think might be within your sphere of control or influence?
• Which new approaches to design and facilitation might you try this year?
• What’s one thing you could change in the way you design that you suspect might bring some ease?

Now’s the time to set some new intentions, build some skills, and acquire additional knowledge.

If you haven’t yet attended our Artful Design and Facilitation workshop, I can tell you – it’s fantastic. If you want to lead transformational PD this year, this is what you need.