PART ONE

Leading Meetings

Get the Whole System in the Room

Control What You Can, Let Go What You Can’t

Explore the “Whole Elephant”

Let People Be Responsible

Find Common Ground

Master the Art of Subgrouping

These chapters present our views on how to plan, organize, structure, lead, manage, and facilitate meetings. Whether you assume responsibility for a meeting’s content, its agenda, its processes, and/or its results, you may find some useful tips and traps. We believe that most of our ideas are applicable whether you have formal authority or not.

Please notice that we use the generic term leading to cover all possible roles you might assume. Anytime you convene a group, or stand up in front and direct the proceedings, or take over briefly to make a presentation, or facilitate a conversation, you are leading, regardless of your relationship to the participants, position in the hierarchy, or role in society. You still have choices to make. These include

• whether you think the goal is reachable given the people in the room (Principle 1);

• figuring out what aspects you can influence and which ones you can’t (Principle 2);

• how to bring into the conversation all relevant information so that opinions can be formed, problems solved, or decisions made in a way that will satisfy the situation (Principle 3);

• the extent to which you are willing and able to share responsibility with others who also have a stake in what happens (Principle 4);

• whether or not finding common ground will be a useful precursor to future action (Principle 5); and

• how and when to pay attention to subgroups so as to keep people working on the task (Principle 6).