How to Easily Facilitate Any Meeting Like a Pro #39

After all, all art is experience. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Company Doctor. Today we're discussing how to master the intricate dance that is facilitating meetings, from smaller roundtables to company-wide discussions. Taking control of the agenda, the art of romance, and mind reading are just some of the skills that Gary will be teaching you over the next half an hour or so, at the end of which you'll be on the path to being able to easily facilitate facilitate any meeting like a pro. Gary, good morning to you.

Ah, George, how are you?

I'm very well, thanks. Sorry, that was my intro voice I had on there, not my normal conversational voice.

Hi, my name's George. You do have a very good voice. You've got a face for radio, George.

I've been told that many times.

No, you're a handsome man. So yeah, this episode is about facilitation.

Mm, yes.

I think it was your choice actually, wasn't it?

It was, yeah. You gave me some options and this was the one. It was another selfish motivation for me in that I do have to facilitate quite a few meetings. So this is just going to be a genuinely useful one for me, if not for anyone else.

That's cool. So yeah, the episode is called How to Easily Facilitate Any Meeting Like a Pro.

Mm-hmm. That's what we want.

That's what we— yeah, for me personally, just to facilitate would be good. But the pro part is an added bonus.

Real bonus.

Yeah. Let's throw that in there. It was funny, I was looking up the description of what facilitation is and the Oxford Dictionary said facilitation is about facilitating. That's what it came up with.

Very helpful.

Really useful. So my translation of facilitation is the act of engaging participants in creating, discovering, applying, and learning insights.

That's your own definition. Yeah, I like it. I like it very much.

It's not strictly my own, to be honest. But people do ask me though, before we get into the topic about what's the difference between presenting and facilitating. And someone shared once with me, which I thought was a really good way of explaining it, 'cause presentation is you're like the sage on the stage.

Oh, nice.

Delivering content to an audience.

Yeah.

You're the sage on the stage.

That's the t-shirt, straight off the bat, sage on the stage.

But here's a better one though.

Christmas is coming, yeah.

Christmas is coming, there's a better one. Facilitation is the guide on the side. Great, guys. Asking questions, moderating discussions, and introducing activities. What do you think?

This is what I think. Next time we do a live show, which I'm sure will be very soon, I'm going to get you a t-shirt saying Sage on the stage, and I'm going to be wearing a Guide on the side t-shirt, standing on the side.

I was thinking about sending this into the Oxford Dictionary because I think they could do slightly better on their description.

I think they could do a lot better, yeah.

I just Ubered it up for them, right?

Yeah, big time. No, it's nice. And also, just to throw my own insight in there, I think the word facilitate comes from a French word, and I think it literally means to make easier. Wow. So I think you're making, you know, by facilitating a meeting, you're making everyone's lives easier. You know, that's the goal, isn't it? To make, you know, to make it an engaging conversation.

George, you're good. You're on it today. I'm loving it. Right. So just another, just another quick thing before we get started. For those, for those people listening, I just want to say this. You can't participate and facilitate your own meeting. Therefore, there's two sides to that. You can't participate and facilitate at the same time. Yeah, you have to choose which one you're going to do, and it goes in both directions. So there's kind of 3 types of meeting that we're going to kind of talk about. One is a small meeting. I was thinking when I wrote this down, I was thinking, well, small meeting is easy to explain. It's like 2 to 20 people around a table. Then I thought, okay, well, that was before COVID Yeah, meeting type number 2, some kind of hybrid meeting where some people are actually in the room and Unfortunately, some people aren't, and that's pretty tricky stuff because you've got to work extra hard to include those people that are remote. Another type of meeting is what I would call a large meeting, and I was trying to define how do you know when it's a large meeting? Well, because it's big, but normally you've got a table at the front and people ahead of you, either on chairs or standing. Right.

I think that works. Yeah. That's when you're sort of presenting to an audience rather than But not presenting. Yeah, yeah, true.

There you go. But in essence, there's a bigger group. It could be a town hall meeting, it could be you're facilitating an event or something, or something not as big as an event, but there's a different requirement there because it's less intimate. So we're going to cover those three types. Great. Does that sound good?

Sounds good. Yeah, sounds very good. And especially from my perspective, the hybrid and, you know, how you sort of wrangle some people who are on a screen and some people who aren't. But we'll get to that, I'm sure.

We're definitely going to get to that, and as always, the juicy bits are in part 3. Stay tuned. Hopefully it works. Okay, so we've got 3 parts. Yeah, classic. The first part, the notes were a bit scruffy again, weren't they? They weren't as good as—

That's okay.

They go backwards a bit.

They go up and down.

Thanks. Yeah, the first topic is what I call forensic business stalking. You just, you didn't seem to react to that in any way.

Well, I should have done, but you've let me in on this one before and I found it incredibly helpful. So yes, I mean, I won't explain what it is because you'll do it better, but yes, it's a concept I'm now, thanks to you, familiar with.

You're a business stalker. Good man. Welcome to the club. Well, the, yeah, but so business stalking for those people that are listening, don't worry. Before any meeting, whether it's a small meeting, a hybrid meeting, or a big event of some sort, a big meeting that you're running, It's really important to research everyone that's coming as much as you can, because you don't always know who's coming, but in as much detail as you can, either the topic. So if there's a particular topic, we'll talk about agendas and stuff in a minute, but the people coming, it's really important to do that. And the reason for doing that, any guess? Why would you want to do that?

Well, I suppose you want to know a bit about them so you can start conversation, keep things moving, and also a bit of familiarity with people. You can get on their wavelengths.

That sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely. So we want the event to go well, and as we're kind of the guide on the side, we're there to moderate, ask questions, get discussions going, and introduce activities. The best way to do that is to ask questions. Yeah. And the kind of questions you want to ask are kind of killer questions. Any idea what a killer question might be?

A difficult one to answer, one that sort of provokes a bit of conversation.

Definitely. So it gets you, yeah, it's thought-provoking and If you want to get a debate going, I don't know if you've ever been where you've been in a meeting before, or even an interview where you've been interviewing someone, and you ask them a question and they go, yes, no, can I close? Yes. And then after like 5 minutes, you go, well, that's been great. Yeah. And we're going to talk about the different types of people in there. So you want to ask thought-provoking questions. So kind of killer questions, things like, what's the most important aspect of this subject to you? Or 'What's the most recent experience you've had of this issue?' or 'When was the last time you noticed this happen?' As opposed to 'What do you think?' 'Any other thoughts?' 'Does anyone have a comment?' You normally get the kind of embarrassing silence when you ask questions like that.

Yeah, tumbleweed time.

Tumbleweed. We'll come back to that in a minute. So be prepared. And the other reason for being prepared is if you do have speakers coming, not loudspeakers, but people speaking, then It's really lazy facilitation to go over to you, George. Right. Because what you really want to be doing, and I'll cover a bit later, is introducing them well so they have a better chance of being successful than just throwing it over to them. It's disrespectful to throw it over to them. Right. Yeah, you seem confused by this, but I'm going to come back to this in a minute.

Yeah, okay, good.

Yeah, cool. No, where are you going to go?

Well, no, because I think a lot of the time, and again, I think I'm talking about presentation here, but I often will say 'And now I'm going to pass over to so-and-so who's going to take you through this, this, and this.' I suppose if they're aware that that's when that's going to happen, it's okay. But if you suddenly throw someone under the bus and say, 'Now they're going to say something,' then that's bad etiquette.

Yeah, there is that. But there's also the— you're a better facilitator if I can go, 'Here's George. What you might not know about George is he's a musician. He wrote the theme tune to this podcast, and he's a whiz, an editing whiz. You know, he can make anything look good.' and he's now going to take you through this part of the presentation. So, you know, write down questions because at the end you get a chance to ask him. Okay. That's a much better introduction than going, over to you, George.

Yeah, but who the hell's George?

Who's George? Now we know George is important. So elevated George to the audience, but also George is feeling probably bigger than he should be. No, not so. So that's an important thing. And then connected to that, I always try to control the agenda. You know, I'm a control freak, but if I'm running an event, if I'm running a meeting, facilitating a meeting, bear in mind, it's, you know, it's participating. Facilitation are two separate things. Yeah, it's very— yeah, if you've got a meeting, you can't participate. That's why you need to facilitate separately. Then I want to control the agenda because I want to make sure it's not boring.

Right. So is that stopping people going off on tangents and getting bogged down in—

well, I mean, the actual writing the agenda before the day itself. Right. So I want to control the flow of the agenda. So what the topics are, how long they're going to be, have they thought through how that might work? If there's a session that needs to be, you know, workshopped, or there's a brainstorm thing going on, or there's some kind of thing that needs to happen as a result, you know, if it's a fairly straightforward meeting, you know, just an update stuff, I want to make sure that people come prepared and they've got, you know, make it a bit more interesting so it's not just boring.

And then do you stick to that rigidly?

Yes and no. I try to stick to it where I can, but I think you need to be able to adapt because the world changes. So you might come in and the person who's meeting is, and you're facilitating for, they say something's happened, we need to move in this direction, then you just got to change. So I guess you have to do both. So the first thing, the preparation is important. Understand the topic, maybe do a bit of research on the topic, and I'll talk about that when we get started. And then, you know, just being as prepared as you can be, but being adaptable because it might need to change. Yeah. Point number 2 is what I call the art of romance. Hmm. Yeah. Interesting. I was going to call it the art of seduction. I thought, you know what, it's probably a bit of both. And what it is, is that if it's a big meeting, when people come in, I just need to kind of calibrate with them. Right. So, yeah, when you're facilitating in a bigger meeting, you need to be able— and sometimes people don't know who you are. You've got to somehow build a relationship with them so that they connect to you. So when you're facilitating, they relate to you and you've got credibility, which is very hard to do when you don't know someone. And so if I'm in a bigger meeting, as people are coming in, I'm just as much as I can, I'm just saying, hi, who are you? Where you come from? And just kind of expressing espresso time, find out where they are, find out a thing about them as quickly as I can, if I can.

And if they all come in together, it's impossible.

But if I'm in a bigger meeting and I'm facilitating, like next week I'm facilitating a meeting of, say, 30 people, then as people are coming in the room, if I don't know them, I just kind of introduce myself and find out a bit about them, maybe.

That's good. And it puts them at ease, doesn't it? I think it makes them feel a bit more like this is a collaborative thing rather than being some, like, frosty figure at the front with your back turned. You know, it sort of opens you up to them.

It does. And I'm going to use it later so that if they tell me they come from a certain place, I might take the piss out of them a bit or just connect back to something they told me. It's hard because you don't get much time. If there are people that you can research before, then again, you can use that. Like, there was one particular guy, I was in a meeting, I looked him up on Google and found out that he was the person that launched the PlayStation 4 or something like that. So I was just using that, I just brought that up in the meeting when it was relevant.

Yeah.

I said, your experience at launching, you launched the PlayStation 4, tell us what you went through.

One of the key things that came up, Well, it draws people in, doesn't it? Yeah, that's nice.

Yeah, it definitely does. So, you know, it's all part of the research, but as the meeting's starting, we're trying to join the dots a little bit. So I call it calibration and linking. It's just like I'm calibrating with them, so I'm building relationship as quickly as I can, being really friendly, creating energy. So when people are coming into the meeting, they know it's going to be— there's going to be a bit of energy to it.

It's not flat.

And I'm getting myself ready for what I call showtime.

Showtime. Yeah, nice. That's good. It's all about setting the scene, isn't it? Because I've been in some meetings before where it has been quite cold atmosphere-wise, and yeah, that can just, it can sort of kill it before it's even started.

Definitely. And if you, and as you as the facilitator, I would just say to you, think about the first 3-minute habits. The first 3-minute habits are how, you know, have you thought through how you're going to open? How are you going to open the meeting? Yeah. And, you know, how do you want to come across? Because the first impressions come pretty soon. So what are you going to do in the first 3 minutes? Don't just rock up and think it's going to be okay. Yeah. Because this, probably the first 3 minutes, is the most important part for you to have credibility as a facilitator. Like, if I go to a venue somewhere, say someone has a meeting in a hotel or something like that, I try to research the place I'm in. Yeah, it's a great way to introduce a meeting is to just talk about the place. People seem to like it. A bit of history to it. Do you realize that in 1900, there was one particular place that got lost in a bet? I was working with a finance company and the building they were in was their own company building, like a training center, but they lost it in a bet. Someone owed a credit to the company. And the story is many years ago, someone had to hand over the keys. And previously to that, back in the 1800s, it used to be the house of a mistress or something. I read up on it in research. So I said, someone put the keys in the middle, ended up they lost their wife and lost their building. And now you have it here. So this is why we're here. It's an interesting way to open up. Don't feel that you need to talk about people's mistresses always.

Yeah, but a bit of history.

But history is always a great way to open up. Yeah. So the art of romance, your job as a facilitator is to basically join the dots, get people to participate and really get the discussion going. But my health warning, and I mentioned at the beginning, I just want to say again, is when you're facilitating, you can't participate. Yeah, you can help join the dots or you can challenge people, but that's not— even if it's your company, it's not your meeting to participate in because then you lose it as a facilitator. Yeah. Yeah.

And I've seen people try and do both and it never works.

It's a tough gig.

You lose. Yeah. You lose out one way or another.

I think you lose credibility because you're trying to run the meeting and then you take over and then people don't speak. Yeah, it's gone at that point. So you're almost trying to be impartial, which I know is hard. And therefore, if it's an important meeting to you, you should get someone else to facilitate. Even if you're the boss, it doesn't— it's not a show of weakness.

Yeah, and yeah, exactly. And it's not sort of saying this person is more important than me because they're running the meeting at all.

Yeah, exactly. So someone who's a good facilitator is really powerful and makes a big difference.

Sounds good. Sounds great.

Okay, so let's get into Showtime. I want to get into Showtime because this is where all the meat and potatoes is. Okay. I like that. You like the meat and potatoes? Yeah, yeah. I don't think it's quite a t-shirt, is it?

Not quite. No, I'm still— my favorite for quite a while is the sage on the stage and Stage and the sage.

Yeah. God on the side. Yeah. So the Showtime bit, there's just two things to remember, but there's lots underneath it. Your job as a facilitator is to be a catalyst and a guide. Right. And I'm going to take you through what that means. So let's talk about being a catalyst first. Now, being a great facilitator, you're the catalyst of this meeting. It doesn't matter if it's a small meeting, a hybrid meeting, or a bigger meeting. And in order to be a catalyst, you've got to kind of create energy. I'm not saying you should kind of have jazz hands, but you need to turn up a little bit. So whatever type of personality you are, just turn up a notch.

Yeah.

If you feel that you're an introvert, that's okay, but just turn up a little bit and be upbeat. And the other thing to do is to disarm the cynics.

Okay. How do you do that?

Well, there's two ways. You can either get a baseball bat. I wouldn't recommend it. I have a phrase, kill them with kindness. Yeah. So don't ever get defensive with someone that's cynical, but always diffuse what they're trying to say with kindness. So you take it on board and say, fine, that's great. But the best way to disarm the cynics is for you to call out what they're thinking at the beginning. Right. So if you know that people are really busy and they'd rather not be in your meeting, you say that at the beginning.

So I know you're busy.

I say to everyone, listen, I appreciate the last thing you want to be doing is being in a meeting here with me. 'But, you know, it's going to be really worthwhile, and I appreciate you taking the time, but I get that you're busy, but let's make the most of it.' Yeah. And that disarms— what, so you're trying to kind of read what they might be thinking and disarm them by covering that up front?

Yeah, nice.

That's useful help to get going. And then, because you've done so much preparation, being a catalyst, asking questions is really key, and asking those killer questions. So prepare a couple of questions at the beginning that can open up the discussion.

Yeah, and I suppose, like you said before, it can't just be a sort of throw it out there and hope for the best. It needs to be sort of pointed, doesn't it? It needs to have some differing opinions and stuff.

Yeah, I recommend the same. If someone's going to an interview, think of a question you're going to ask at the beginning and the end. And it's the same when you're facilitating whatever size meeting. Yeah. Prepare a question at the beginning irrelevant to the topic that is not a yes or no thing. Yeah, it's a more thought-provoking type of question. And then during the meeting, you know, use people's names as much as you can. Now, some people are not very good at remembering names, so, you know, the way I do it is I print out— if I know who's coming to the meeting, not if there's like 50, but if there's between, you know, 2 and 15 or something, I print out, uh, and you may or may not know them because it may be in your own company, or you may be running a meeting for someone else, I print out, I go to LinkedIn, I print out the pictures.

That's good.

I know what they look like and I keep it in front of me. And in the room I'm going, oh, I can see George is there. So I go, so George, tell me what you think. And you go, how does he know my name? Because I do remember names. But if you don't remember names, that's a way to do it. You can't always find the picture.

But, and would you recommend doing that? So say if you do ask your questions and there's, you're not getting a sort of overwhelming response, would you start saying 'George, why don't you tell us how you feel about this?' Or, 'Why don't you give us your opinion?' So you do sort of try and call on people.

Yeah. And during the session, you're going to get people that are loud and people that are quiet, and your job is to turn down— think of a human volume control, turn down the loud ones and turn up the quiet ones. Your job is to make sure everyone is heard. So you don't have to pick on people with names, but I prefer to call people by their names and I refer back to things that I've heard earlier on when I was calibrating. So if you're a Spurs fan or something, then I might say, come on, George, this is for Spurs. What are you going to tell us about blah, blah, blah? I just try and make it a bit lighter, but do that. And then if you're using a flip chart, I always write down what people say, whatever they say. I don't translate what they said to meaning something else.

Yeah. You don't say, oh, what you mean is this, I think.

Yeah, I might ask what they mean, but when I'm writing, you know, when you do like a— sometimes you write on a flip chart when there's a brainstorm. Whenever you do that, always write down using people's language. Yeah, because it just works a lot better. You can still challenge, you can say, what do you mean? But part of the participation is write down the actual words on the flip chart.

Yeah, no wrong answers.

So that's participation, no wrong answers. And then you're trying to create debate. So as part of the debate, you're trying to what we call ignite discussion. So you're trying to encourage an alternative opinion, if you like. Yeah. And as I said, you're trying to get the quiet ones to speak and the loud ones to be quiet.

Yeah.

So your job is to look around the room and try and encourage everyone to speak and politely tell the people that are speaking too much, say, thanks very much. Let's hear from someone else. Yeah. Who else has got some thoughts about how this widget worked when you plugged it into the whatever it was.

Yeah.

This is me not knowing.

Science.

So as a catalyst, energy, participation, debate, they're the 3 things you're trying to do as a catalyst. You're there to kind of ignite that debate and discussion. Yeah. As a facilitator. Now, let's quickly talk about, you know, now we're in a hybrid situation. It's very easy to focus on people in the room and forget the people either on the phone or on Teams or wherever they are. And this activity and this style needs to extend to the people that are on the phone. In fact, you probably need to overcompensate for people that are remote. Yeah. So a good example would be, so if you, as George, you're on Teams, but everyone else is in the room, I have to remember to go, oh, George, and tell me what your thoughts are and how did that work when you tried it last time?

Yeah, no, that's good. And I've seen it happen in the past where people who are on on the screen, they just put their mics off and their cameras off and you just don't hear from them the whole time.

Yeah. So if you ever worried about, if you ever come across someone goes, I'm sorry, I was on mute. Have you ever heard that before? That's because they're not participating. So your job is to keep asking questions. If I keep asking questions, then people won't be doing something else because they're worried I'm going to speak to them and ask them a question. Yeah, I facilitate exec dinners and we can't eat while we're doing this because I keep asking people questions. So we eat afterwards. But basically I'll go around the room in the research I've done. Against every person. I just keep asking questions that are relevant to the topic, but people don't know when they're going to be asked next, so they're always tuned in. And that is the best way to keep the engagement with people in the room. So ask questions, drive people mad with questions. Yeah, that creates debate.

Yeah.

And you're right.

And it keeps people interested and it keeps people on their toes.

Attention. Attention. So that's what you do as a catalyst. Then the other part of your job is you're a guide. The guide on the side. Yeah. So the guide part is, there's 3 parts to this. The first thing is you're there to be kind of visionary. And the reason is that, I don't know if you've ever been in a meeting where someone goes into the little detail, yeah, but what's the chemical makeup of this product? And what happens if we didn't plug it in, would it not work? And you get into that kind of detail and your job is to be visionary. So, you've got to help people see the bigger picture. Yeah, you keep lifting people back up again, and you've also got to be optimistic that we can improve, because if everything's so bad, we're all going to die from it, that's not a very constructive meeting. So our job is to be optimistic that we can improve. And one of the ways I do that, and I do this a lot, and I think I've mentioned this before, is I put constraints to the side in the corner of the room. I go, Yeah, look, there's going to be loads of issues and you'll be able to, unless you want to get the discussions about the issues and obviously you'll have to discuss them. But if you're trying to get beyond those, I say for the moment, take all the constraints. If you had no constraints, put them on the side, what would you do? We'll bring them back in in a minute. But if there's no constraints, what do we do? Yeah. So I'm optimistic that we can improve and I'm trying to see the bigger picture. And then my job is to keep everyone focused so they don't go off in a different tangent. Yeah, I sometimes say something like facilitator's indulgence. Can we just get back on the topic? Facilitator's indulgence. I'm allowed to ask you this, but yeah, yeah, I see we've gone off, we've gone off on a different direction, which is great and it's really important, but just so I can make sure we finish on time and get to the topic you want, can we just get back to talking about—

that's right. And you can position yourself not as the bad guy, but as the one, you know, listen, facilitator's indulgence.

If you don't mind, I'm just going to break the game. You want me to kind of keep you on track, so can you tell me?

Yeah, because people do, they get lost in those sort of, in the minutiae and the details, and it can derail a discussion. So I think, yeah, you need to make sure that people are sort of brought back. It's like, right, okay, cool, let's put a pin in that and we're going to come back to the—

Put a pin in that. Yeah, exactly. Or, you know, some people do kind of, they have a flip chart with a car park, so they put it on there. Let's put that in there and we'll come back to it. We'll make sure we take it away. Put it in the car park.

Nice.

I don't have a car. Never mind. Put it in the car park anyway. And your job is absolutely to keep the meeting on time. If you run over and you didn't get to all the topics, that's your fault because you didn't— the reason I want to own the agenda is I want to make sure that that meeting covers everything it needs to and we finish on time. So I timebox everything. Yeah. So if there's 5 things to be done, I've worked out how long I've got on each, and then I'll just make sure I've got enough time to go, right, we haven't got much longer on this topic, so In the time we've got, is there anything important that we need to discuss before we move to the next topic?

Yeah, that's good.

So time box, you're there to manage time all the way through. It doesn't matter if the meeting is half an hour, 1 hour, whole day. You're there to make sure it finishes on time and that everything gets covered. Yeah.

Yeah, there's nothing worse than when you get to the end of the meeting and it's sort of like, well, there's loads of stuff we haven't covered in this, but I think it's been a really interesting discussion. It's like, well, that's not really the point. And also that inevitably means we're going to have to do this again in a week's time to cover all the stuff that we didn't get to in the first one.

And that's why I think the agenda is important because you can work out if there's too much being covered, being overambitious about what you're trying to cover. Yeah. So that's part of that. The second, so you're a visionary, you're keeping it high level. The second thing as a guide is the guide on the side, is you're a translator. You know what I mean?

Are you sort of interpreting what people are saying? And putting it to the wider group.

Yeah, you're trying to translate the context of what people are saying to other people. So a good example is sometimes people use jargon, right? So I would ask them, what is a TLA? Oh, it's a 3-letter acronym. Okay, well, let's just not do the acronyms. Or if someone says something, I'll say, oh, George, you're in finance. What that means, can we just check? So if George is in finance, what does he need to know from what you've just said? I'm trying to translate.

Yeah. Is that just to make sure it's relevant, making sure it's relevant to everybody?

Yeah. Keep it relevant to everyone. The word I use is it's got to be in context to everyone. So, you know, everyone needs to understand what it means for them. And if there's an action, what do you want them to do as a result of this? So keep it relevant to the team. Ask for clarity. Maybe, you know, if someone says something, tell us more about that. Tell us more about that. It's a really good way to, I call peel the onion, if you want to get down on the next layer. So tell me more. Yeah, that's interesting. What did you mean by that? Tell me a bit more. And then I try to summarize what, so what you're saying is that if we add 1 and 1, it comes to 5. Okay, that's interesting. So I'm summarizing. So I'm translating what people are saying for everyone's context.

That's a skill in itself, isn't it?

I think facilitation is a skill. It's a skill and it's something that you have to practice. It's not an obvious, everyone thinks it's easy, just rock up and Yeah, be in charge, but it's not quite like that. It's okay. And then the third, the third and final part of being the guide on the side is being a mind reader.

Okay, go on.

What do you mean by that?

Tell me more about that.

Well, so here's the thing, right? As a facilitator, I'm working the room, so I'm looking at everyone and I'm sensitive to everyone, so I'm staying detached and I'm watching people's body language. And this is the classic one. So you can see someone's uncomfortable about something that's been said and they're twitching a bit and you can see it. Most people will ride roughshod over those people. If maybe if I keep going or we don't cover it, then no one will notice. Yeah, but that's— that doesn't make any sense. What actually is happening is someone is uncomfortable and it's going to unravel And when they leave the room, they're just going to leave the room and they won't even remember anything else. They're just really annoyed. Yeah. So our job is to watch the body language and call it out. I, I say a lot to people, George, you look a bit uncomfortable with that. Tell me what's on your mind. Let's get out on the table.

And the people usually receptive to that?

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

And they appreciate it because— or I say, hold on a minute, I don't think George was happy with that. Or 'You look like you've got a question, George. What is it on your mind?' No, it's not always a bad thing. It's sometimes it didn't understand it. I don't think everyone got that, but you've got to be a mind reader and watch people's body language and make sure that people are comfortable, particularly quiet people. You know, the extroverts will let you know and they'll drive you mad. Yeah, but that's not everyone in the room. And maybe you're sometimes looking for a hidden, hidden meaning to something. And I do that a lot. I'm always looking around and I call out if I can see someone hasn't either understood, isn't comfortable, or They look like there's a question in their mind, right?

Because there's a lot to have to notice, isn't there? A lot to take in while you're also sort of absorbing everything that's going on in the meeting at the same time.

Yeah, I mean, so that's the thing. So that's why a catalyst is keeping the thing going. The guide is you're watching everybody and making sure that everyone gets a chance to speak, but also that you're inviting those who look like they've got something on their mind to speak. That's a key part of being a facilitator. Being a facilitator isn't being the maître d' or not being the— it's not being the jazz hands host. Yeah, that's just one part of it. The more important aspect is actually is making sure that everyone gets, gets heard and they had a debate about the things they wanted to talk about and that it all happens on time. So it's not an easy, an easy job. But I think with those things in mind, I think if you're a catalyst and a guide, the catalyst is energy, participation, debate. And the guide is you're like a visionary, you're a translator and a mind reader, then you've got— it's a lot of things to remember. It's like when you start driving, it's like, yeah, yeah, when I started driving, I was like, oh, uh, I don't have my driving instructor next to me now and I'm on my own, and mirror, mirror, signal, maneuver, and blah blah blah. And then, you know, fast forward many years later, I kind of had my leg over the steering wheel, my arm out the window at the same time. Cup of tea, you know, you're making a sandwich in the back all at the same time. So it becomes second nature. Yeah. So let me give you the takeaways.

Yeah, the key takeaways.

The key takeaways are coming up. Here they are. Number 1, research the topic and the key players in advance. Prepare those key killer questions because you're going to use them throughout. Number 2, facilitate, don't participate. You're there to facilitate. And that means your job is to make sure the meeting works really well. And number 3 is be a catalyst and a guide. Be that human voice control. Turn down the loud ones and turn up the ones that aren't speaking enough. And then I've got 3 Ks, which probably makes them 4 points. What the hell? My podcast, I can do what I like. Sure, exactly. Here's the 3 Ks. Keep engagement, K number 1. K number 2, keep linking. Linking back to what someone said, or when you met someone earlier, or a message that you heard before. And number 3, keep time, keep to time. Your job is to make sure it's on time. And if you do that, you'll be a pro at facilitation.

There it is. Love it. Well, that is fantastic, Gary, as always. Thank you very much. The sage on the stage himself.

Sage on the stage, not the guide on the side.

This is our new double act, I'm sure of it. But thank you very much. Fascinating as always. And thank you to you all for listening, and we'll see you next time.

See you soon.

If you enjoyed this episode, head on over to thecompanydoctor.com for plenty more from the archive, plus show notes and extras. And be sure to subscribe to this podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.