Facilitation Essential #3: How to Intervene

One of the most important jobs you have when running a meeting is to keep the group on track towards the meeting’s intended outcomes.

Easier said than done!

While some cats are easier to herd than others, rabbit holes abound. And the more people you have, the more complicated the conversation gets.

And, interrupting a team who has gone off track is not always easy. There’s the act of interrupting, calling out that they’re off track, and the social maneuver to get back on topic.

Here is my personal trick for handling the fact that intervening is really hard.

I try to prevent the derailment in the first place.

Facilitator Preventions

Preventions are the actions a facilitator takes to prevent the derailment from happening. This is done by doing the following things:

• Contextualize a topic before opening up the conversation.

• Remind the team of the time allotted.

• Review how the team is going to handle this topic or decision.

• Name likely temptations for getting derailed.

I also recommend pointing out places where derailments could happen, or have happened in the past. Name this before you enter that topic or section of the meeting to prevent the same derailments from happening again. Inspire the team to manage themselves to stay on track.

Here are some examples of facilitator preventions:

• “You might be tempted to dive into details of specific budget line items, but let’s stay focused on the budget as a whole for this conversation.”

• “We have ten minutes to handle this topic so let’s try to be concise and stay focused.”

• “For the first part of our conversation, I’d like to hear only from those who have direct experience with closing sales.”

Preventions will help avoid many unproductive meeting habits. But once in a while, it’ll still be necessary to intervene.

Facilitator Interventions

Intervention are actions the facilitator takes to course-correct when a meeting has gone off track. As I mentioned, interventions are just plain harder than preventions. Sometimes I wait to see how long the unproductive or off-track situation will last, and often, I regret waiting. Intervening is hard because you don’t want o make someone into the “bad guy” and it’s a judgment call - sometimes those tangents are actually fruitful.

If you decide to intervene, keep your tone friendly yet clear. “I just want to point out that we are on a tangent.”

Important note: you’re not saying the group cannot or should not be on the tangent. It’s that it’s often unconscious for team, and the team should practicing the discipline to stay on track and allow tangents when they’re chosen consciously.

After you name the situation, you can either advocate for what to do (stay there or get back on track) or you can ask the team what it thinks should happen. This depends on your level of clarity, the stakes, and the team’s ability to efficiently decide.

The more preventions you do - and remember, putting together a good meeting design is itself a prevention (see the six Ws of meetings here) - the fewer interventions you’ll have to do. Aim your contextualizing remarks and instructions at helping things go right. Make this explicit rather than only talking about the work topics and just hoping the meeting magically runs itself!

This is the third and final post in the 3-part facilitation series. To read more click here for part one or here for part two.