You’re the manager of a large hospital unit, and depend on your charge nurses to get a lot done and provide good leadership. You’d like to bring them together for interactive leadership training and give them some structured ways to support one another.

The departments in your organization have fallen into an us/them mentality that’s troubling your staff and causing a drop-off in productivity. You're planning to initiate a series of meetings that help the departments communicate better and understand one
another’s needs.

Your non-profit has many stakeholders — board members, volunteers, staff, community members, the clients you serve. You’re about to do some work around your purpose and mission, and you want to make sure you’re hearing from the right people.

Good meeting design and facilitation can be tricky, especially when the stakes are high. We specialize in bringing the right people together to talk about the right things.

Our approach to meeting design and facilitation:

• Sees every meeting as an opportunity to further the purposes and mission of your organization.  Life’s too short to spend in meetings that aren’t purposeful and engaging. We have seen powerful results when people come together in well-facilitated meetings.
• Creates an inviting space to talk about even the toughest topics.  Skilled facilitation helps enable respectful dialogue instead of the conflict avoidance or combative style that groups sometimes fall into.
• Encourages participants to deeply listen to one another.  Often, group discussions can be a lot of opinions and not much listening. Our facilitation style models tactics like asking clarifying questions; respecting silence; and paraphrasing to check for understanding.
• Thoughtfully considers the best way to build commitment and engagement every stop along the way.  Are there quieter people that need to be drawn out? Are there issues around commitment that need to be addressed? What’s not being said that needs to be said?
• Begins with assessment.  We won’t show up and facilitate something without hearing first from key players. We want to know about their experience in the organization and what they want out of coming together.
• Gets things done.  Bringing people together takes a lot of time. Ultimately, your meetings must produce results. We help focus attention on action steps and accountability.

Here’s to experiencing purposeful, productive meetings together.