Facilitate Your Project Meetings Like a Pro

Imagining you are leading your very first project team. This post is inspired by a coaching session I had with an ambitious and talented young professional. Her challenge was to improve her ability to facilitate project team meetings with much more experienced professionals who needed to work together well.

As project manager, you are charged with keeping the project on schedule and within budget. Communication with your project team (as well as the project stakeholders) is key to moving the project forward toward completion.

You will be leading project team meetings on a regular basis. Naturally, the more effectively you facilitate these meetings, the more likely the project team will reach its goals. I am happy to share a list of tips and tricks – inspired by coaching techniques – which offer solutions to common project team meeting facilitation challenges:

• Trying (unsuccessfully) to make notes and facilitate the discussion at the same time? Introduce silence officially and explicitly: “I need to make a few notes on what we just discussed and agreed upon, so let’s push the pause button on our discussion for about one minute." Or, better yet – set up notetaking with AI.
• Anticipating useful deviations from the agenda to happen? Have a plan, and yet walk in ready for anything; that is to say, a change in plans. Your plan can even be seen as a back-up.
• Anticipating not so useful deviations from the agenda to happen? Bring things back on track: “I’m noticing that we are getting off-topic here. Shall we return to our original agenda?”
• Need to step out during the meeting for something else? Plan for the possibility in advance. Figure out who can take over if and when you need to step out. Agree with that person and the team in advance as appropriate, so that they are not taken by surprise when it happens.
• Anticipating some challenging dynamics? Get your antennas out there and notice what’s going on! Observe the behaviors of your project team, as well as how you are feeling and experiencing things. Consider making use of this model: NOTICE – NAME – NAVIGATE. Notice what’s going on, share your observations with objective language, and gain agreement from the project team on what to do moving forward. Example – someone is taking more than their fair share of airtime: “I’m noticing that we haven’t had a chance to hear from Johan, Christina and Juan. How about we shift the discussion in their direction now?”
• Over-focused on ‘lookin’ good’? Arrive early (virtually or ‘live’) – be the first one there. Get all your technology set up before the project team arrives. THEN, be ready to greet early arrivals and have some chit chat. Use this moment to shift your focus away from you ‘lookin’ good’, to concern and interest in making the meeting productive, useful, interesting, and for the project team. So, focus away from self and toward them. It will show in everything you do.
• Getting concerned about running out of time? Name it! Example: “We’ve spent 30 minutes on this topic, and we only have 20 minutes left. Here are the items we haven’t covered yet [and mention them]. Let’s agree on how we spend the rest of our time.”
• Got about 10 minutes left and need to do a ‘hard stop’ (end on time)? Say: “We’ve got about 10 minutes left – how can we best use this time?” Here’s another variation: “We’ve got about 10 minutes left, I propose that we do XYZ.”
• Want to make it clear that you will be managing time? Send the agenda out before the meeting. Have it on hand and share it up front, and let the project team know that you will manage time. Example: “I will be managing our time, so you will probably see me doing some things to keep us on schedule.” It will probably reassure the team to know that the agenda and its timing are in good hands! Make agreements along the way, as suggested in above bullets. Cutting deals regularly is KEY!!
• Concerned that there are too many agenda points to be covered in the time allotted? Agree up front with the project team on the items that are essential to cover, and have a list of the items in priority order.
• Experiencing disagreement in the room? Here are three directions you could go: (1) “I can see that we don’t have full agreement. Shall we agree to disagree for now, and take this discussion off-line?” (2) “I can see that we don’t have full agreement. We can do one of several things.” [then you can propose a vote, or a follow-up meeting to take the discussion further, or that you make the decision based on what you’ve heard, or something else]. (3) “I can see that we don’t have full agreement. What suggestions do you have for next steps?”

These coaching-inspired facilitation “tips & tricks” will go a long way to ensuring that you provide your project team with the meeting value they need to move forward efficiently. Jump right in and give these “tips & tricks” a try. Practice will make perfect!

For more on meetings, see Coaching Cube, November 2020:
ARE YOU OVERWHELMED BY MEETINGS?

For more on how to improve the quality of your interaction, here's the model NOTICE-NAME-NAVIGATE, see Coaching Cube, October 2024