Modified Dynamic Facilitation

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MDF Guidelines

Preparation: If your group decides to use email to prepare and post an agenda before the meeting, a day or two before the meeting, the facilitator will email a reminder to team members with discussion items. Copies to handout will be prepared before the meeting by the facilitator.
New discussion items can be proposed to the group using email before the meeting when possible. (Note: You may want to keep some flexibility and spontaneity and allow people to add to the agenda at the meeting if they have something they are feeling a lot of passion about. It can help keep things more timely and that is important.

An option is to invite the team to arrive 15 minutes early for tea and socializing. Facilitator to begin meeting at the scheduled start.

Plan for an opening and closing to gracefully bring the group together, and to close the meeting. Members volunteer for this. Other options are quick check-ins and introductions if there are new members or guests.

Options: Read the Vision/Mission of the group. Review meeting facilitation agreements. Ask for volunteer timekeeper if needed. Prioritize and timeline discussion items if desired. (Be careful to schedule an amount you can actually address, not trying to be comprehensive or you can end up rushing to cover everything, which is not so much fun.) Review agenda from previous meeting’s minutes (a few minutes)

 

At business meeting start, facilitator can (or a member can volunteer to):
review agenda with team regarding item prioritization, time frames and write them on a large newsprint tablet page that can be seen by everyone. This page has the agenda items, abbreviated, and columns below for brief notes on Decisions, Homework, Ahas!, Concerns and Next Meeting Agenda - or whatever of these your group needs.

This is handy to have on a large newsprint tablet for the next meeting. (Note: This turns out to be very helpful! Everything is right there. All your meetings are archived and can be referenced easily right there.

Option: Timekeeper signals to remind the group in an unobtrusive way. (For example, hold up fingers to indicate number of minutes remaining.) Modifications to the time limit can be decided upon, if needed.

Sub-team reports:
Facilitator will help keep reports around 5 minutes maybe 10, uninterrupted
Group allows reporter to give a complete report--leaving questions for the end.

Facilitator will make spaces at the bottom of the newsprint chart for:

Decisions
Homework -(volunteered individual tasks)
Aha’s (!) -very helpful when they happen, can take group to new level
Concerns - tend to resolve naturally when they are written on the newsprint chart in full view during the meeting. - This is a big advantage of this MDF process. -L

Next meeting’s agenda items- Can be kept on the next page if not enough room.
This may seem like a lot to record but we were able to do it and got better at it and it proved to be very helpful in the long run.

Consensus is the goal for agenda topics.
We may decide to use the finger voting method:
1 finger held up: I agree.
2 fingers: I don’t agree but I’m willing to live with it.
3 fingers: I don’t agree but I’m willing to work for an alternative solution.

At the end of each meeting, designate the facilitator and notetaker and agree upon a time for the next meeting, if you haven't a regular schedule for them

Minutes can be typed up in Micro$oft Word format by notetaker for reading and scanning ease. Next meeting agenda, time, and homework will be at end of notes.

Copyright 2007 - Lynnette Allen, MA