The Five Fold Path of Productive Meetings

By Starhawk

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.

Download the full chapter. 

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

Download the full chapter. 

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Topics:

• Working in Groups

Collection:

• Progress Capacity Building Hub

Tags:

• Collaboration
• Communication in organisations
• Facilitation
• Group skills
• Meetings

Language:

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