Employees in most organizations spend several hours each week in meetings. All employees, regardless of their position and where they work, will at some point have to attend a meeting with co-workers. However, the leaders of the organization must recognize that a lot of resources are tied up in meetings and each meeting must be productive or they risk tying up future resources in follow-up meetings. Here are a few of the components of a good meeting:

• Commonly described and understood objectives
• A clearly defined process for achieving those objectives
• An understanding that participants will arrive to the meeting prepared, or have an interest in the subject
• A sense among participants that their opinions and decisions are valued

The reason that so many meetings are unproductive is because they lack the qualities mentioned previously. The main reason they lack some or all of these qualities is because the leader of the meeting lacks facilitation skills. Organizational leaders can lack facilitation skills for a number of reasons, often because they: don’t have any sort of meetings training, or they possibly can’t keep their personal biases from affecting the way the meeting is run. Bringing in an outside expert with facilitation skills will benefit the organization before, during, and following the meeting in these ways:

• Before the Meeting: The individual will speak with the organizational leaders before the meeting to acquire needed background information and to determine the goals of the meeting itself. The individual with facilitation skills will also ask organizational leaders for information about existing personality conflicts, so that they can be dealt with during the meeting. Once the individual has collected a sufficient amount of background information, he or she will record and distribute that information to participants before the meeting so that everyone is on the same page.

• During the Meeting: These professionals rely on the extensive meetings training that they have obtained to smoothly, efficiently, and effectively lead the meeting. To put it simply, the facilitation specialist will manage the group’s meeting to: make sure that all of the meeting objectives are met, to encourage complete participation and effective thinking, and to ensure that everyone contributes to the chosen solution. The professional might use exercises or ice breakers that they learned in meetings training to coax shy individuals out of their shells, or to mediate personality conflicts. Another of the possessed facilitation skills that he or she might use is the ability to move the meeting along if the discussion gets off-topic.

• After the Meeting: Organizations will find that less future meetings are necessary since everyone will be on the same page. During the meeting, the facilitator will ensure that all agree with the solution and understand their role in implementing the solution. This makes it easier for the organization to reach its objectives after the meeting.

Organizations that are looking for a professional with facilitation skills will find that there are a number of internet companies that provide a database of individuals with meetings training and facilitation skills. The organization might peruse those databases or ask the company for help finding the individuals that are the best fit for the organization’s needs.