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Meeting ground rules

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Facilitation techniques are about designing and managing group interactions so that people truly collaborate and make sound decisions.

(Bens, 1997)

 

I recently attended a full day session on building facilitation skills for meetings. Despite the large amount of time I spend in meetings—as a participant and as a facilitator-participant, I have never formally learned about meeting design. The facilitator, Charles Holmes ran a great session and I learned a lot. In this blog post, I write about one key idea from the session: Ground Rules

Ground rules make sense in the context of meetings. They help participants establish common understanding about what is desired and appropriate behaviour so that the group can function effectively and make high-quality decisions.

Though I know it is good practice to do these, I have—to date—typically avoided creating ground rules when facilitating meetings and processes. Somehow, I feel awkward about doing them with adults because I believe ‘we all know how to use common sense and be good to one another in our interactions’ (and so my assumption is that it is condescending to spend time articulating how we want to interact with one another). Yet, that assumption hasn’t consistently proven to be true! And, I have participated in various mundane and ineffective meetings.

So, I think it is time I get over my feeling of awkwardness.

Here are some key points about ground rules that I took away from the session I recently attended:

1. Discuss why it is worthwhile spending time developing ground rules and how these will be used. Though, as a facilitator you may be aware of the benefits of ground rules, the same may not be true of the participants. Therefore, it is worthwhile thinking about how you will introduce the concept and its application to the specific group you are working with. Do not assume meeting members will buy-in and/or know how to use ground rules; instead, make time to have this discussion together.

2. It may be desirable to use a word other than “ground rules”. Because some people may react negatively to the word ‘rules’, it may be preferable to use another word. Alternatives include: meeting norms, team agreements, rules of engagement, or conditions for success.

3. Create ground rules as a group and clarify meaning. After you have introduced the concept to the group and once you have buy-in, generate the ground rules together. Invite people to volunteer ideas and take the time to clarify the meaning of the words as people will associate different meanings to words. Make sure to create ground rules that are specific enough so that it is easy to determine whether they are being honoured.

4. Interact with the ground rules on an ongoing basis and give permission for the rules to be modified. By that I mean, you will want to post the rules at the meetings (i.e., on a flipchart or other appropriate visual) and make reference to them as needed. The point is not to create rules as a group (#3) and then forget about them.  Give the group permission to ask questions about and amend the rules.

5. Check-in at the end of the meeting as to whether the rules were honoured. At the end of a meeting, or on a periodic basis, it is helpful to check-in with the group as to whether they thought each ground rule was met. There are different ways to do this. For example, you can have a whole group conversation if your sense is that this is a high-functioning group in which members can have healthy disagreements. Alternatively, you can ask people to individually and anonymously rate the degree to which a rule was met on a piece of paper that you collect. Regardless of what approach you take, it is then important for the group to have a conversation about the ‘results’.

For some additional resources and/or sample ground rules, see:

If you have additional thoughts and ideas about facilitation and using ground rules for effective meetings, please leave a comment below.

 

This post is a modified version of a LinkedIn post I wrote in June.

 

Bens, Ingrid, Facilitating with Ease: Core Skills for Facilitators, Team Leaders and Members, Managers, Consultants, and Trainers, Participative Dynamics, 1997.

Photo:

Team Touching Hands, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Team_touching_hands.jpg

Determining priorities: 3 helpful images

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This post presents 3 images that you might find helpful as you work at determining priorities for your work, family, health and otherwise.

 

Urgent/Important Matrix

Priorities_urgent_important_

Image Source: http://10minutemanager.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Action-Priority-Matrix.jpg

 

 

Impact/Effort Matrix

Priorities_quick_wins_

Image source: http://10minutemanager.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Action-Priority-Matrix.jpg

 

Importance/Feasibility Matrix

Priority (feasibility & importance)

Image source: http://www.slideshare.net/Raza_Ali/monitoring-and-evaluation-of-health-services

 

Assessing team process in student learning teams

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This blog post was inspired by a session on assessing team processes that I attended at the Festival of Learning.

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Teamwork by Easa Shamih https://flic.kr/p/91hqQ5

The session presenters were from Royal Roads University (RRU) where teamwork is the pillar of most programs.  Because teamwork is such an integral part of their course and program design, and because teamwork also presents many challenges, the  Coaching & Counselling Centre (CCC) and Centre for Teaching and Education Technology (CTET) have partnered to develop resources and workshops to help students and faculty members improve team-based learning1 at RRU.

Below are some notes and learnings from the session on assessing team processes:

  • When instructors design a project that involves teams, they often measure outcomes and not process. Yet, assessing the process matters; by gaining insight into how teams function and how individual members contribute, one can build healthier teams.
  • Resources from TeamsWork, the RRU initiative, can be found  here. They include workshop slides, activities, information from the literature and more. This site is worth exploring!
  • ITP Metrics is a Canadian site that provides free “team dynamics diagnostics, peer feedback, and behavioural assessments.” I had a chance to review a sample report and was impressed. The reports are free because the work is associated with a funded research project.
  • Some  advantages of team work can be found here.

Other resources this session inspired me to look into:

  • We often use the term ‘team’ when we mean ‘group’.  Interested in some differences? See here.
  • Carnegie Mellon’s Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation has some terrific resources on group work, including a number of inventories and assessments.
  • The Association of American Colleges & Universities has a helpful and detailed teamwork rubric available for download.
  • iPeer  is an open source web application that allows instructors to develop and deliver rubric-based peer evaluations.
  • Kahoot.com is a free online tool that can be used to engage students/workshop participants in active learning (we used this at the Festival session; the downside is that results are in a spreadsheet).

If you have resources to share, please leave them in the comments or be in touch with me via Twitter or email.

  1. ‘Team-based learning’ in the context of RRU is not the same as the Team-Based-Learning developed by Larry Michaelsen.

Social media profiles: Best practices for mastering your digital footprint

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At the Festival of Learning, I attended Dr. Greg Chan’s sessions:

This was a terrific opportunity to spend a day exploring web visibility in my professional life and planning for changes in my online portfolio. Below are a list of links and random ideas related to the workshop and my learning.

How do I show up?

To check what shows up when I Google myself, open up an incognito window in Chrome and search my name. Any surprises? I was happy to see that what appeared was: my isabeauiqbal.ca site, my CTLT affiliation (I expected this to be lower down), my LinkedIn, Twitter, and then some pictures (mostly me).

Sites: Must have/Good Idea/Maybe

  • According to Greg, the “must join” list is: Twitter, Facebook (just can’t do it), LinkedIn and Google+
    • for research specific: Academia.edu, ORCID and Research Gate (Consider Google Scholar). Greg said ORCiD was especially good for researchers wanting to collaborate and gain greater exposure. The site gives you something like a DOI and also a QR code (which you can make part of your conference presentation)
  • the “strongly consider” joining list is: Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube
  • the “think about” list is: Storify, Litsy

Twitter: Hashtags and Abbreviations to Know about

#WednesdayWisdom
#Scholar Sunday
#AcaDowntime

ICYMI – (in case you missed it)
FTW (for the win) – sometimes about yourself, but can be of someone else to celebrate their accomplishment
HT (hat tip) – give an accolade to
PRT – please retweet (If you want to make RT stronger, tag people)
TT – throwback Thursday
YOLO – you only live once (i.e. photo of you Skydiving or less dramatic)

Building your Site and Hosting

Efficiency

  • Consider Hootsuite or Buffer to manage posts on social media
  • Gravatar – changes your picture in all your social sites
  • Tweet deck  (visually helpful way to see what you want to see on Twitter)

Other

  • PicMonkey: edit your pictures  
  • Medium.com: cross post from my blog to this site (Thanks for the suggestion @trent_g)
  • Fiverr: Hire people to help with WordPress, photo editing and tons more

For additional perspectives on Greg’s sessions, you can also see:
@fol_media            #socialmediaBCTLC         #FoL16

My Next steps for Social Media Presence

As a result of attending Greg’s workshops, here is what I have committed to:

  • Change the look of my existing isabeauiqbal.ca site to something that looks more like kathleenbortolic.com
  • Build my academia.edu profile (was dormant and I only vaguely remembered I had it)
  • I will further explore and consider ORCID, Vitae and Research Gate.

Facilitating effective meetings: Creating desired meeting results

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A facilitator is one who contributes structure and process to interactions so groups are able to function effectively and make high-quality decisions.* (Bens, 2012)

team meeting
I recently attended a full day session on building facilitation skills for meetings. Despite the large amount of time I spend in meetings—as a participant and as a facilitator-participant—I have never formally learned about meeting design. The facilitator, Charles Holmes  ran a great session and I learned a lot. In this blog post, I write about one key idea from the session: Desired meeting results (the ‘learning outcomes’ equivalent of meetings).

Desired Meeting Results

Desired meeting results (DMRs) are concise written statements sent to meeting participants ahead of time, which help participants picture what they must accomplish by the end of the meeting.

Characteristics of DMRs

  • Are specific and measurable
  • Are nouns (not verbs) [the verbs appear in the agenda]
  • Answer the stem “By the end of the meeting, we will have…” (a decision, a list, an agreement, an awareness, a plan, etcetera)

Why use DMRs?

DMRs help participants gain clarity on the following:

  • What do we want to accomplish in this meeting?
  • How will we know this meeting has been a success?
  • What do we want to leave this meeting with?

How DRMs differ from meeting purpose and agenda

DMRs are different from the purpose, which describes the overall “why?” of having the meeting. And, they are different from the agenda, which describes the how of getting to the DMRs (the agenda is where you find the verbs).

Below is the framework that was suggested at the workshop. As mentioned above, this information would be sent to participants ahead of time:

  1. Why we are having this meeting (this is the purpose)
  2. DMRs
  3. How we will achieve the DMRs (this is the agenda; it links every item to a DMR)

Here is my stab at applying the framework to a meeting I am having on Tuesday.

Revisiting the DMRs at the close of the meeting

At the end of the meeting, it is important to revisit the DMRs. And, though this isn’t uniquely related to the DMRs, it is also useful to spend some time debriefing “What worked?” and “What would you do differently next time?”

For additional resources on meeting design, see:

MIT Human Resources

Into the Heart of Meetings: Basic Principles of Meeting Design (Book, 2013)

Let’s Stop Meeting Like This: Tools to Save Time and Get More Done (Book, 2014)

And, of course, work by Ingrid Bens (quoted at top of page)

 

*Bens, I. (2012). Facilitating with ease: Core skills for facilitators, team leaders and members, managers, consultants, and trainers. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.