Winding Down: How to Better End Meetings and Workshops (Facilitation Friday #26)
Effective facilitation winds down the work and participant relationships in any individual session so that it helps wind up whatever follows.
Getting a meeting off to a good start? Great!
Also ending it on a high note? Even better!
Few things are less satisfying than a well-facilitated meeting or workshop that fizzles out or ends in fitful dribs and drabs. Effective facilitation avoids this by allocating sufficient time for a thoughtfully designed segment that appropriately brings closure to both the content and the community.
Such winding down segments often:
Address any items placed in the parking lot(s) for later consideration.
Review decisions made and next steps along with the accountability for action. So what was decided today and what happens next? What is to be shared … with whom, by whom, when, and how?
Reflect on the gathering and capture key takeaways (individually and/or collectively) to guide subsequent sessions. What worked well today that we want to continue in the future? What one thing would have made our time together even better?
Assess the effectiveness of any group norms established: How well did we honor the agreements made to guide our work?
Celebrate the group and reinforce the relationships among its members. The longer the group has been (or will be) together, the more critical this may be as the relationships and spirit of community take on more individual or collective importance.
Deciding what to include and how much time to allot
Too often winding down segments are rushed or inadequately addressed because the facilitator did not plan appropriately. As a result, follow-up actions may suffer, the group’s long-term capability and capacity may not grow, and the sense of community among the group's members or their satisfaction with how time was spent is not reinforced.
My general guideline is “the longer the session, the longer the closure segment.” For a half-day meeting, I might allot approximately 20-30 minutes with 45 minutes or more set aside for a full-day event. For full-day or multiple-day gatherings, you may wish to integrate winding down elements throughout the gathering.
Reinforcing relationships
Be sure to consider how much interpersonal closure is appropriate for your event and that the activities you include align with the culture(s) of participants and their organization(s). The orientation meeting for a local charity’s board of directors is a very different gathering than a weekly company staff meeting.
Example:
Consider the final meeting of a task force that has worked together for the past 12 months, one consisting of people who previously had little to no interaction with each other. Individuals may want to briefly express their own thoughts about the group and its work, so your final segment would include a process to do so.
Putting some brief structure to the effort can keep it meaningful, yet focused: Let me invite each of you to take 1-2 minutes and share what you most appreciate about our time together these past 12 months.
Really tight on time, but want each person to share? What two or three words capture your feelings about our time together?
It generally helps to include a time limit. Otherwise, the initial speaker will model a length that others often will mirror. Allow participants a few minutes to initially reflect on their own and generate their response. This both honors introverts and increases the likelihood that everyone can actively listen as others share.
When the time available or the group size does not allow for such individual expression, you could have participants note their responses in writing, post them, and allow time for a Gallery Walk in which everyone scans the posted responses. Breaking into pairs, triads, quartets, or small groups is another way to allow for substantive sharing, but without needing the time the large group would require.
Finally, you might share a story, poem, quote, or video clip that articulates and embodies what members of the group might say if time does not allow for them to contribute or to put a bow on the closing segment. Your facilitator toolbox is more useful when it is well-stocked with closing expression options.
A few other practical pointers
For events people traveled to attend, remember to anticipate and plan for some participants making an early exit. Your grand ending won’t be so grand if people start to trickle away before you enact it. Have a backup plan (both for content and community) if you discover some participants will depart early.
When facilitating action planning or reviewing next steps, capture that output visually (flipchart or online whiteboard or document). Doing so makes it easier in real time to spot omissions, demonstrate progress made, and reinforce individual accountability for what happens next.
With small ongoing teams, consider a “go around” approach to clarifying individuals’ post-meeting responsibilities. Let’s go around and have each person share what actions items they are accountable for as you move forward. Having participants verbalize their tasks reinforces the commitment in their minds, and the go around format makes it easy to spot any individuals who lack a follow-up assignment.
I sometimes use Take a Task cards to distribute work among participants. Note one follow-up task per index card and post all index cards on a wall. The tasks include both those possible to identify in advance and ones that surface during the session. At the end of the meeting invite participants to each select one task/card from the wall as their action item. Be sure to capture who takes what tasks.
Winding down when it is not a meeting
What about a one-time workshop, say a 90-minute conference session? As the session likely focused more on content than the relationships among participants, the closure effort should do the same. At minimum it should invite participants to distill their key takeaways from the session, how they will apply them to their respective efforts, and with which colleagues they will share them. This helps build what Donald Schön calls the reflective practitioner.
Bottom Line?
You need to determine how to wind down any individual session so that it helps wind up whatever follows.
Let me suggest that the critical design question for the facilitator is this:
For the group I am facilitating and the work participants have done together, what is the appropriate mix and length of activities to facilitate closure (temporary or permanent) to both the work and the relationships?
Whatever your answers, set yourself up for success. Identify and prepare multiple closure activity options in order to allow for real-time flexibility based on the time available, the group's energy and needs, and the meeting or workshop environment.
Bonus idea
For a group that meets regularly (staff team, committee, class, et al) consider rotating the responsibility for winding down and/or facilitating each meeting among all members of the group.
Facilitate a discussion with the group of what a good winding down effort should include (not include) and any preferences they might have for these time blocks. Then pair people up and assign them a meeting date for which they will lead the winding down efforts.
This approach introduces variety to the process (which helps keep it fresh) and helps build the capacity and confidence of everyone to take on a facilitation responsibility.
Getting in Action
Design an appropriate winding down segment for a meeting you facilitate (or participate in) that currently lacks one or includes one that would benefit from a refresh.
Identify a few quotes, poems, stories, or video clips to add to your toolkit of closing activity options for the types of meetings and/or workshops you facilitate most. Select ones that will resonate with diverse participants.
Consider a meeting or workshop that can only allocate 10-15 minutes for winding down. What might you do in this closing segment? How might the limited time influence your overall design and facilitation of the meeting or workshop?
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