The Five Fold Path of Productive Meetings

Introduction

The Five-Fold Path to Productive Meetings is a special bonus chapter from Starhawk’s The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups.

Productive meetings allow an organization to move forward, keep members engaged and give them a sense of empowerment and efficacy.

Meetings can be cauldrons of group creativity or occasions of intimate sharing. And, of course, they can also be long-winded, fruitless, pointless arenas of frustration. The difference is often what makes or breaks a group.

There are five aspects of structure and interpersonal dynamics we must pay special attention to if we want our meetings to be truly productive. I call this the Five-Fold Path of Productive Meetings.

Contents of the Chapter

The Five-Fold Path of Productive Meetings

• Learning to Love Meetings 1
• Right People 2
• Right Container 5
• Right Process 8
• Right Facilitation 33
• Right Agenda 52
• The Five-Fold Path 57

Exercises

• Key Questions About Who Should Be At a Meeting 3
• Encouraging People To Come 4
• Ongoing Communication 4
• A Template for Minutes 5
• Simple Voting Procedure 14
• Consensus Roles 19
• Hand Signals 21
• Facilitators’ Toolbox 41

Access Resource

Download Chapter – The Five Fold Path of Productive Meetings (PDF)

Explore Further

• Berit Lakey’s classic ‘Meeting Facilitation: The No Magic Method’
• Action group meetings
• Facilitating Online Meetings
• Leaderful Organizing Tool: Good Meetings
• Facilitating Meetings: A Guide to Making your Meetings Effective, Inclusive and Enjoyable
• Consensus Decision Making
• Leaderful Organizing Tool: Blended Decision Making