Do Not Fail to Manage Participant Expectations (Facilitation Friday #35)

When attended to with care, intention, and attention, they can help ensure better outcomes for our facilitation efforts.

It is the start of a meeting or workshop. 

What expectations might participants have?  What might they hope will happen or wonder about the session?

I sometimes use this question to open facilitation skills training workshops that I lead.  After people note a few responses we discuss and compare their respective ideas. 

They are often surprised by the myriad of expectations and aspirations participants may bring to a session they will facilitate.  You can sense them becoming a bit overwhelmed as they contemplate trying to fulfill them.

Managing expectations is a critical component of effective facilitation.  It requires thoughtful attention and planning before a session begins, at its onset, and throughout the meeting or workshop itself. 

So what can facilitators do to help ensure participants’ expectations are met?  Here are nine principles I find helpful for doing so, some with links to additional relevant information.

Nine Principles for Managing Expectations

1. The more a session description for an optional workshop specifically articulates the nature of the content it will cover, the questions it will answer, and the formats it will utilize, the more potential participants can discern if attending will meet their interests and needs.

2. The more descriptive the meeting agendas, the greater the likelihood that participants come understanding why the meeting matters to them, what the gathering is intended to accomplish, and how they can prepare to contribute their best thinking.

3. The more we use advance surveys to learn about participants’ interests, needs and questions, the more likely it is that we can design a session that effectively addresses them.

4. The more we use advance communications and any pre-work to socialize participants in advance to the nature of the meeting or workshop they will experience, the more likely they will attend and contribute with a helpful mindset.

5. The more we periodically check-in to assess content relevance and comprehension, particularly during longer sessions, and recalibrate subsequent conversations and content based on this feedback, the better the odds that participants leave satisfied.

6. The more we privilege active learning and a variety of formats that engage both introverted and extroverted participants, the easier it is for participants to share their respective knowledge, insights, and experience in support of others’ learning and interests.

7. The more we help participants make connections and meaning from conversation—idea to action, decision to implementation, theory to practice, general to specific—the more value they may derive from the meeting or workshop.

8. The more we craft a well-designed Q&A/application segment near a session’s end to review decisions and next steps in meetings and for capturing takeaways and identifying application opportunities in workshops, the more likely the value created during a session extends after its conclusion.

9. The more our post-session evaluation questions assess how well participants’ expectations were met, where we fell short, and what they would like to see done differently if the session was held again, the more we can improve our future efforts.

Bottom Line

There’s no avoiding the expectations that participants may bring to a meeting or workshop, nor should facilitators want to do so.  Indeed, these expectations should inform our session design, as well as our real-time facilitation choices.  When attended to with care, intention, and attention, they can help ensure better outcomes for our facilitation efforts.

Getting in Action

1. What are some expectations or aspirations you think participants bring to meetings or workshops you facilitate?  Which ones might matter most to them?

2. Select a few of your responses to question #1 and brainstorm ways you might better manage them using the principles in this essay or others ideas you have.

3. Imagine you’re facilitating a meeting or workshop and early on it becomes clear that some participants have expectations or aspirations that different from the session you’ve designed. How might you manage this?  What different options are available to you?

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