The 2 personas for your team meetings
Vasi is here. The procrastination expert Vasi.
Song of the dose
(imagine Sade singing smooth facilitator… ) Forget it…
Let’s start!
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Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 8 seconds.
In a previous dose, I shared with you the advice of our gang for a team meeting to be effective. It must have:
1. A structure
2. Roles of participants
This dose is the continuation —> 2. Roles of participants.
What’s the issue about?
The 2 roles I will focus on in this dose are
1. Facilitator
2. Visualizer
These two roles are assumed by 2 people from your team. These people are not excluded from discussing the topic and making a decision.
Their participation in the meeting is divided as follows:
– 50% are involved in the discussion and decision-making
– 50% are involved in their facilitator and visualizer roles.
1 tip from our gang:
It’s better when the roles of facilitator and visualizer are taken by people from the team who are as far removed from the topic of the meeting as possible. Otherwise, if the topic excites them a lot, there is a danger that they will get lost in the discussion and lose their roles.
Facilitator and visualizer are with autonomous roles and work together as a team. They are the team’s tool to have balanced communication.
* Balanced communication means everyone’s opinion is heard & no important information is leaked.
The facilitator: Drives the discussion
1. Makes sure every voice is heard
2. Gives the floor and/or interrupts the speaker
3. Makes sure no-one hijacks the discussion
4. Mines for conflicts / seeks different points of view
5. Keeps the focus on the main topic and pauses outside matters
6. Monitors the team’s energy and time by defining breaks
You can check out these 6 hints that give more details about the role of a facilitator.
The visualizer: Focuses on clarity
1. Records and visualizes in front of everyone on a board or a screen
2. Clarifies, paraphrases
3. Marks the different opinions on the different issues
4. Marks open questions
5. Summarizes
An important clarification:
The visualizer is not responsible for meeting notes. They are not the facilitator’s secretary. Their visuals and notes on the board should be able to be deleted after the meeting is over (they don’t leave for archive). Or, in the end, only the decision with accompanying action items remains on the board.
Let’s Wrap Up
When you have people on your team taking on these two roles during your meetings:
⟹ People in your team will be more synchronized and because of this they will be able to hold each other accountable for unfinished work, based on the decisions made.
⟹ People in the various roles will acquire and develop new skills related to active listening, synthesizing information, monitoring the team pulse and more.
⟹ People’s activity and engagement in discussions will increase.
There are other frameworks (eg DACI) for assigning roles in meetings, so you can choose your own role option.
If you want to explore more on the subject
Facilitator School – a global community of professionals who want to learn facilitation skills.
Daniel Wirtz – Creator & Co-Founder of Facilitator School.
Stay Healthy, my dear Pill-er!
– Vasi
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