Missing Skill: Facilitation

It seems like there is always another meeting coming up for most of us. And if your experience is like mine and many others, that thought doesn’t bring a lot of joy. The fact is, most meetings are a boring chore that struggles to accomplish much.

The funny thing is that there is an entire career around facilitating meetings. There are certifications, training, books, and experts that exist who know how to facilitate meetings that are a joy to experience. Most organizations invest nothing in this space.

So, here’s a sideways idea: Learn to facilitate meetings.

When you develop some skill facilitating meetings, you can begin to help address the woes of meetings that don’t have a purpose, agenda, and are full of stress and tension. Once you show you are a skilled facilitator, you’ll be asked to facilitate meetings for different groups. Those groups could be a group that you want to have a relationship and influence with.

Facilitation is, in my opinion, the single most needed skill in a company. By developing your ability to facilitate, the right decisions get made without a lot of dysfunction.

A great book to get started on the subject is Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka.