Planning a virtual meeting?  To state the obvious, different meeting objectives require different facilitation techniques.  Here are ways to manage four common types of meetings. 1. MEETINGS TO INFORMCommunication is primarily one way. One or more speakers present to the audience. Techniques that work TO INFORM: 2. MEETINGS TO CONSULTThe...

Everybody is complaining these days that it is hard to keep people engaged in virtual meetings. Here are three tips to improve engagement in your next meeting. Begin by thinking about what a participant needs from you before giving you their attention. First, they need an emotional connection to the...

What does your brain do when it hears a question? To find out, let’s experiment. What color is your house? Could you NOT answer that question? After reading that question, what were you thinking about? The obvious answer is the color of your home.  Though this exercise may seem ordinary,...

How reduce virtual meeting overload? Simple! Have a Meeting Without the Meeting! I’ve been asking clients about their biggest frustration with the massive move we’ve all made to online meetings. It is, “I now spend more time than ever in meetings!”  While the ease of setting up online meetings with...

“If you could choose, what would your chosen superpower be?” That is the question Paddy Dhanda asked me on his Superpowers School Podcast! My answer? “I prefer it to be somewhere between Superman and Superwoman, but without the glamour and glitz attached to their characters!” Join Paddy Dhanda for a...

Conflict can kill progress. And for my students, conflict is one of their biggest worries. Here is what you can do to transform conflict into cooperation in your next meeting. Get your mind in the right frame of mind. I like to reframe the meaning of conflict by asking myself,...

I facilitated a conference recently on the charismatic fish, the Steelhead Trout. The many presentations suffered from a common shortcoming. And there’s a good chance your presentations do as well. Now, don’t get me wrong. The presentations at the Steelhead conference were all well reasoned and thorough. When I say...

Are there good techniques to improve your ability to listen? Why should you try? How do you do it? That’s what we cover in this article. Improving active listening skills is like being a champion athlete. It’s easy enough to learn the basics but learning how to win takes practice!...