For meetings to be effective and meaningful, intentional planning with a focus on results is necessary. Jolie Bain Pillsbury’s workbook, Results Based Facilitation: Moving from Talk to Action, provides a set of competencies that give you the skills you need to make a measurable difference. The work of collective alignment, action, and impact occurs through the interaction of individuals in meetings that move from talk to action. To support the work of alignment in meetings, you should consider three working assumptions that inform which competencies are included in the results based facilitation (RBF) skillset, how those competencies are defined, and what the sequence is for learning and applying the competencies.[4]

• The work of meetings occurs through conversations and a trustworthy process:  You can see any meeting as a series of conversations of differing length across an array of processes. If the process engages, honors, and challenges people, you stand a greater chance of having the group discover what needs to be done, which leads to action.[5]

  Within longer conversations are smaller conversations, each with an identifiable beginning, middle, and end. You and your partners want meetings with conversations and a process that create both meaning and movement toward action and results. A partnership conversation is defined as people listening to and talking about the same thing at the same time in a way that, over time, leads to

   

  • understanding and relationship building,

  • problem solving and conflict resolution, and

  • decisionmaking and commitment to accountable, aligned actions.

• A designated facilitator with the right skills is necessary: Partnership conversations can be designed, prepared for, and flexibly supported by someone with a set of listening and speaking skills. Design, preparation, and interaction skills can be seen, named, practiced, and applied to all conversations. Each person in his or her role can practice these skills in conversations and can contribute to partner ownership of the purpose and moving to action. Learning and applying these skills starts with

  • awareness and choice about a role and 
  • willingness to practice the skillset. 

• Ensuring your facilitator can hold neutral in stakeholder engagement meetings: A person holding a neutral role, using a set of listening and speaking skills to support the work of a partnership, can accelerate the work of that partnership. Holding neutral in any role occurs when a person gives the work back to the partnership and does not use his or her authority to pursue a personal agenda. Holding neutral in a facilitator role is aided when the partnership authorizes

  • specific tasks in support of achieving the articulated purpose of the partnership within commonly understood boundaries of time and place.