Just recently I worked with improvisational comedy genius John Cremer to co-facilitate a session for a Chief Executive networking organisation. at Knowsley Hall, Merseyside.
Our remit was to create an environment to allow quality networking between two groups of Chief Executives and one group of Senior Managers, many of whom had never met before.
Following extremely close consultation with the chairmen of these groups we established that the objectives were to have the CEOs/Managers establish and share 3 things:
1. What could they do to help others in the room?
2. Who else did they know who could help others in the room?
3. What best practice could they share with others in the room?
Each of these three objectives were in the context of the challenge of the current economic environment affecting businesses up and down the country.
It was certainly a tall order especially as the group chairmen were trying out something new with their groups.
Fortunately, myself and John rose to the occasion and a good day was had by all so not only did the chairmen go away happy at their forsight in envisioning the potential of such a day but their members also went away thoroughly stimulated with a bunch of ideas, contacts and actions to apply to their business.
Now I won’t bore you with the details of exactly what we did, but I want to give you a flavour of how we did it.
In essence the key to effective group and meeting facilitation relies on these key components: