The single biggest amount of pushback you'll get is when you say you need to interview folks prior to the interview.

I said interview, not survey.

Everyone you think needs to be in the meeting has a unique perspective on the situation, the dynamics, and what good will look like. Not knowing that is risky.

How will you handle when two people erupt into shouting during your meeting? Wouldn't you rather know this up front?

The interview helps you sort through the support, plans, and dynamics you need to take into account. If you are going to be a professional facilitator, you need to interview folks.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders are the group of folks who have an interest in the meeting's success even if they do not attend or participate. They often can endorse, support, and make this meeting happen or not.

Your interview with them will need to include an agreement to the purpose and overview of gross timings and materials. This is because these folks can often get approvals for facilities and materials as well as shut you down if you're going way outside of what they expected.

Yes, you have to interview them before you know what you need, and that is a challenge. However, you'll quickly find out if there is a discrepancy between what you both thought even if you can't be too specific yet.

A stakeholder may be interested in a team reset and alignment, but also think that it should only take 1-2 hours and you might think it takes 8-16 hours.

You'll want to add questions for these folks to cover what facilities, budgets, and other support requests they are willing to help with as well as overall endorsement of the meeting.

Do not skip getting their endorsement.

Attendees

These are the folks who will be attending the meeting and participating fully. There is another category of observers, but for the sake of the interview this category covers it.

Because these folks are participating you need to pay extra attention to the dynamics that exist between people. Your attendees inter-personal issues are likely going to show up as some form of dysfunction, so you might as well know now.

Also, you will want to pay attention to what your attendees say about who else should and should not attend. Attendees tend to be the closest to the problem and will have a stronger opinion about who needs to be added or included as well as removed.

List of Questions

• Would Purpose be useful to you?
• What have your past experiences with Purpose been like so far?
• Are there topics we should definitely tackle related to the purpose?
• Are there topics we should definitely avoid?
• What would you need to participate in the meeting?
• What gets on your nerves or makes you want to stop participating?
• Who else should be in the meeting?
• Who shouldn't be?
• What would make the meeting more worthwhile?
• What concerns do you have?
• What can I do to make the meeting better for you?
• What else do you want to tell me?