Facilitated meetings offer a way to avoid bad decisions that come about as a result from ineffective planning and poor collaboration. A good facilitated meeting can strengthen your organization, just as one that is poorly planned or run will cause a lot of difficulties. Facilitation is both an art and a skill, a science and intuition. Attention and practice will only promote better facilitation. The more people develop facilitation and other process skills, the smoother meetings will run.

This guide discusses ground rules, meeting purpose statements and techniques for building agreements. It also provides suggestions on identifying and dealing with difficult people.