Meetings That Get Results

About the Author

Terrence Metz is a Certified Structured Professional Facilitator (CSPF), lead instructor, and managing director of MG RUSH Facilitation Training and Coaching. His professional journey encompasses diverse areas such as mergers, organizational design, problem-solving, process improvement, product development, and strategic planning. Terrence is particularly passionate about equipping leaders with the skills to conduct meetings that consistently yield clear, actionable results. His decision-making tools for galvanizing consensus, including Perceptual Mapping and Quantitative TO-WS Analysis, are utilized worldwide.

Main Idea

"Meetings That Get Results: A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings" by Terrence Metz provides a structured methodology to ensure meetings are productive and effective. The book focuses on the role of the meeting facilitator as a servant leader who guides participants through a well-designed process, ensuring that meetings produce clear and actionable outcomes. It offers detailed strategies, tools, and techniques for planning, leading, and managing meetings, emphasizing the importance of preparation, structure, and active facilitation.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Launching
• Serving: Discipline of Servant Leadership
• Leading: Be a Servant, Not a Senator
• Facilitating: Making It Easier with Three Core Skills
• Collaborating: How You Manage Conflict
• Structuring: Meeting Design Made Easy
• Planning Approach for Any Group: Who Does What, by When?
• Deciding About Anything Approach: Agree on the Why Before the What
• Controlling: Online Challenges and Special Situation Tools

Analyzing and Explaining Each Idea and Sub-Content

Introduction: Launching

In today's fast-paced world of back-to-back meetings, effective facilitation is crucial. Metz compares leading a meeting without proper training to attempting to build a boat without the necessary skills. He emphasizes that meetings rarely proceed in a linear fashion, often looping and twirling due to various disruptions. The goal of business facilitation is to eliminate distractions and help a group of experts focus on the same question simultaneously. This method, when executed properly, can lead to remarkable outcomes.

"Rarely do events, meetings, or workshops proceed in a linear fashion. They don’t just 'start here' and then 'end there.'" - Terrence Metz

Serving: Discipline of Servant Leadership

Effective meetings often fail due to the wrong attendees, apathetic participants, or leaders who lack the skills to conduct productive meetings. Metz introduces the concept of the servant leader, a role crucial for modern organizations. Unlike traditional leaders who provide answers, servant leaders facilitate by asking precise questions and creating a safe environment for responses. They focus on guiding participants from where they are at the beginning of a meeting to where they need to be by the end.

"Today’s complex knowledge base and knowledge transfer technique require a new breed of servant leaders." - Terrence Metz

As servant leaders, facilitators need to master preparation, anticipate group dynamics, and design meetings accordingly. This involves managing the agenda, ground rules, and conversation flow while remaining neutral about the content developed during the meeting.