Facilitating Great Meetings

Few things are more central to the day-to-day operations of any company than meetings. By and large, most people dread the meetings they attend. Even though there is important substance to cover, most meetings are poorly organized and are not run very well. This leads to a lack of focus, a common sense that time is being wasted, and often a failure to accomplish the purpose at hand.

It turns out that designing and facilitating successful meetings requires skill. Mobius Executive Leadership has deep expertise at understanding how meetings work. This includes an understanding of the common pitfalls meetings run into and appreciating the subtleties required for people to come together and achieve success. At Mobius we recognize the nuances of human dynamics as well as the nature of office and organizational politics. We know how to manage interactions in the room with an eye toward achieving the substance on the agenda. And we know how to use time extremely well so that meetings are productive and efficient.

Large Gatherings: Running Annual Meetings

Most organizations convene a large meeting of several hundred employees or managers each year. The purposes of this meeting include updating people on corporate changes, introducing the strategic direction or goals of the new year, building morale across the organization, and cross-selling between different business units or regional offices. This annual gathering is enormously important for sharing critical information and for setting the tone across the firm for the year ahead.

Mobius Executive Leadership assists companies to design and facilitate large annual meetings. We work with partners inside of a company to discern the needs of this particular session. In turn, we work with the firm to form the agenda and to design each module or session. Our consultants work with senior executives to hone their major messages and assist them to prepare and deliver effective presentations to the gathering. This often includes consideration of how to express “hot” issues in a way that gets the message across without creating undue anxiety in the audience. Mobius expert facilitators assist companies in running the meeting itself, as well as capturing results of group discussions for circulation in company newsletters or reports to the Board. Finally, we help meeting planners to choose and find appropriate guest speakers on a particular topic or a generally outstanding motivational speaker.

Critical Meetings at the Office

Running effective meetings is important in day-to-day operations, but becomes critically important under certain circumstances. When a group faces strategic decisions or engages a topic that is challenging to talk about, outside facilitation by experts can make the difference between success and failure. Mobius consultants work with teams, managers and leaders to facilitate meetings or a series of meetings to tackle particular challenges and decisions. This includes helping the most senior executive teams to address very sensitive issues. Facilitated sessions can be held at the company’s office. We often suggest that longer or more intensive meetings be held off-site.