Facilitation Essential #1: Vocal Signposting

Signposting is a term used in writing that means the author is referring to their own writing. An example would be: “In this blog post you will learn a very effective technique for running meetings.” As you can see, the writing references itself to anchor and orient the reader.

I have borrowed and adapted this term to meetings to describe a powerful facilitation technique: Vocal Signposting. This is one of the most effective leadership behaviors for running meetings in a way that keeps the meeting on track and the team engaged.

“Vocal signposting” during your meeting means you periodically refer to the meeting itself as you shepherd your team through the agenda.

vocal signposting is an effective leadership behavior to keep meetings running forward.

Here are some examples of what vocal signposting looks like:

• “The purpose of this meeting today is…”

• “Alright, we just finished our check in. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got on our plate today.”

• “That concludes the budget conversation. Next on our agenda is the retention problem in IT.”

• “We have about ten minutes left today. Let’s turn our attention to who will do what before we meet again.”

In each of these examples, the facilitator of the meeting (who is often the leader of the team, but doesn’t have to be) is verbally anchoring the team to where it is as it navigated through the agenda.

Vocal signposting is a straightforward technique, but may take some habit change to cultivate. Often, even if new facilitators are tracing where the group is, they don’t think to vocalize that information out loud to the team.

Vocal signposting during meetings has many benefits:

• As simple as it sounds, it orients the team to where it is within the agenda (or down a rabbit hole!)

• Similar to above, it calibrates the team’s attention to where it should be focused.

• If a teammate’s mind has wandered, this technique gives them an opportunity to rejoin the conversation.

• It keeps the group on track.

  • Example: “We are on. tangent about changing our CMS. Do we want to table this or forfeit the rest of our planned agenda?”

In doing this, there is an opportunity for you as the leader to add some color to the discussion. You might reinforce values, acknowledge hard conversations, or name the discipline it will take the team to get somewhere in the next conversation.

Try practicing vocal signposting as you run your next meeting. You might feel like a radio announcer at first, but have fun with it!