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The most important parts of a successful meeting occur before participants enter the room. A meeting facilitator works with you to think through your goals and
build an agenda based on thorough preparations that take into consideration a range of important factors, including input from participants and key stakeholders.
A well-structured, well-run meeting can create momentum for an organization, boost collaboration, and build morale for a team. In contrast, a meeting that is not planned well or run effectively can quickly turn into an energy drain that leads to poor decisions and negative sentiments.
For your next important meeting, consider working with a professional meeting facilitator to help design the sessions and manage the interactions in a purposeful and constructive way.
To discuss how we might help with your next meeting, set up a call with us by clicking on the Contact Us button below.
A West End Partners client, a senior executive at a leading interactive entertainment organization, was planning an offsite for more than 50 people on her global team. This was the first time many of these team members were going to meet in person after a recent acquisition and Covid related travel restrictions, with a small number of participants attending virtually.
First, the leader wanted to instill self-care and well-being practices as part of their work-life balance. The team had been running at breakneck speed for a long time due to time crunch on projects and collaborating through the pandemic. Burnout and attrition were both genuine concerns.
The second objective was for team members to get to know each other in an engaging, fun setting while learning about business priorities directly from senior leaders of various divisions.
West End Partners collaborated with this senior executive to design the agenda for the multi-day event that would ensure it was not a “data dump” from senior execs, and that participants were not just passive recipients of information. The leader asked West End to help design the sessions to ensure that participants would have meaningful interactions with their team members while meeting as many of them as possible.
Our approach to the design built in periods of deliberate reflection, structured peer discussions, and made sure timing and delivery was in line with best practices around people’s ability to focus and take in information. To address well-being, the leader brought in a keynote speaker whose talk drove these messages home to the whole group and share ideas on ways to incorporate self-care into their work routines.
Our facilitator helped to ensure that peer interaction and relationship-building was woven into the entire participant experience. In addition, she helped ensure that team members identified some clear take-aways for implementing some self-care practices back on the job. Based on her experience attending, the sponsor of the meeting followed up with us after afterwards and indicated how much she appreciated the flow and interactions at the summit. She asked West End Partners to collaborate in planning another summit for her team the following year.
A professional facilitator is a valuable resource when the stakes are high for an upcoming meeting. Bringing your people together for a meeting is often a significant investment of time and resources. When teams and stakeholders gather, meetings are an opportunity for your leaders and managers to make important decisions, clarify their vision, build and strengthen relationships. But when a meeting is planned or run ineffectively, it can quickly turn into an energy drain that leads to poor decisions and negative sentiments. Our meeting facilitators work to set you and your meeting up for success in the planning, execution and follow-up.
As a leader, a major benefit of working with a meeting facilitator is that it allows you to engage fully in conversations, exercises, brainstorming and relationship-building during the meeting. It is likely that you have experienced the challenge of managing the agenda while trying to take part in thoughtful discussions. Working with a facilitator, you are able to be fully present, knowing that your agenda is covered and meeting goals will be reached.
Often, groups benefit from working with a neutral person from outside the organization to facilitate meetings when difficult conversations need to happen. Our facilitators moderate discussions without bias or preference for the decisions that will be made as a result of the meeting, and work to make sure that discussions are balanced and all opinions are heard. This is an important factor that helps participants buy into the outcomes of the meeting. buy into the outcomes of the meeting.
West End Partners helps you maximize your time together by allowing everyone, including you, to be fully focused on the task at hand and confident in a process that will deliver productive results.
West End Partners’ meeting facilitators will assist you from the planning stages of your meeting through on-site delivery. We will work together to clarify your goals and design how best to achieve them in your meeting. This will include developing the agenda with input from key stakeholders, facilitating the conversations and activities during the meeting, and providing a summary report after your meeting.
Our process starts with a conversation where we discuss the goals and desired outcomes of the meeting and learn about the dynamics of your organization. From there, we collaborate with you to:
Professional meeting facilitators can increase the value and productivity of your meetings through:
West End Partners has a proven track record in supporting clients to run meetings that get results. See below for some of the of types of meetings we facilitate.
West End Partners facilitates a wide variety of meetings, such as:
West End Partners is an Everything DiSC ® Authorized Partner, and we deliver DiSC workshops that are customized to meet your organization or team’s unique development needs.
Backed by over 40 years of research, Everything DiSC ® is an assessment-based learning experience that deepens self-awareness, enhances appreciation of others, and fosters effective collaboration in the workplace.
These team-building sessions enhance participants’ understanding of themselves and others, and help them to appreciate different priorities, preferences, and values that each person brings to their team and organization.
DiSC has been shown to improve teamwork, communication, and productivity.
West End Partners designs and is certified to deliver workshops based on Gallup CliftonStrengths ® (formerly known as StrengthsFinder ® ). These workshops help teams and individuals turn their natural talents into strengths that can help them excel in their roles and be a great benefit to both team and organizational performance.
benefit to both team and organizational performance.
Using the CliftonStrengths 34 assessment as a development tool, your people will uncover their unique combination of CliftonStrengths ® themes. They will leave the workshop with a deeper understanding and vocabulary related to how they and others naturally excel, and how your team can leverage these individual and team strengths to improve its overall effectiveness.
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