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Impact Stories
Building trust through more engaging and inclusive meetings
How coaching helped a new executive director transform meetings and culture at the National Center for Youth Law
When Shakti Belway became Executive Director at the National Center for Youth Law, she was stepping into a big job. The organization was going through major changes, and one thing stood out right away: meetings weren’t working. They felt too top-down, too passive. Shakti wanted something different: more participation, more inclusion, more energy.
So she reached out for support.
10 months. 1 facilitator. 10 hours of coaching.
Through the Resilience Initiative, Shakti connected with UFacilitate coach Caterina Rodriguez. Through our custom matchmaking process, we paired Shakti with Caterina, one of our top coaches when it comes to leadership building, because we knew the diversity of her experience and expertise would add immediate value.
Together, they explored how facilitation could help shift the way Shakti’s organization communicated and made decisions with meetings being at the heart of this culture.
The challenge: too much change, not enough dialogue
Not yet a year into her role, Shakti was already leading a big restructuring. The team was rewriting their vision and values, launching a new, inclusive budget process, and preparing for a leadership retreat. Everything was in motion at once.
She knew she needed the team’s trust to move things forward. But people seemed disengaged, and there was a culture of one-way communication that didn’t align with her values.
She wanted to invite more voices in, but was careful not to push too much, too fast. Meeting fatigue was real. Expectations were high. She needed tools she could use right away, and a way to build participation without overwhelming people.
The process: starting small, building confidence
At first, the coaching was focused on an immediate goal: preparing for an all-staff budget meeting. Shakti wanted the conversation to be more interactive, and not just a presentation.
Caterina led Shakti through an exploration of small ways to open things up, like using Mentimeter, an online, user-friendly interactive presentation tool. Shakti leveraged it to engage quieter voices and large groups through anonymous, live input, and conducting live prioritization and real-time feedback collection. She also used other Thematic Visualization techniques, such as shared documents and sticky notes, to capture and visualize discussion themes to increase clarity, surface group insights, and support better decision-making.
But soon, the work went deeper. Instead of just planning better meetings, Shakti started thinking about how she wanted to lead. She tried new techniques between sessions such as 1-2-4-All, an inclusive discussion format from Liberating Structures that helped her team generate and synthesize ideas or feedback, ensuring all present had space. She then reflected on what worked, and built her confidence step by step.
The biggest shift was internal. Early on, Shakti looked to the coach for answers. Over time, that shifted into greater trust in personal judgment. The coaching space became a place to test ideas, refine approaches, and develop facilitation instincts. She quickly understood that facilitation is a way of being rather than a series of techniques, and began experimenting with possible approaches, always pausing afterwards to reflect on what felt effective.
The shift from dependency to agency made her learning sustainable.
The impact: meetings with meaning and a culture shift
Shakti grew more confident in initiating and managing difficult conversations. She developed a drive not to avoid uncomfortable issues but to find the best way to navigate them with intention. She became more open to experimentation, more transparent with her team about what she was trying, and more willing to model a culture where learning from failure was embraced.
Her approach to meeting facilitation and design also changed significantly. She gained clarity on when and how to integrate participatory opportunities into meetings, resulting in a noticeable shift in engagement. Some staff also reported a greater sense of alignment, efficiency, and trust in meeting discussions.
Shakti was:
- Leading more open, people-centred conversations
- Designing meetings that felt purposeful and engaging
- Comfortable trying new approaches, even when they weren’t perfect
- Modeling transparency and inviting more voices into decision-making
She also added the new facilitation approaches to a Board retreat, including sessions that helped board members reconnect with their own purpose and values. This approach signalled a significant shift: engagement and inclusion were now being modeled from the very top of the organization.
Meetings felt clearer and more useful. People were showing up differently. Staff started participating more, and a stronger sense of shared ownership over the organization’s direction began to emerge.
By the end of the coaching engagement, things had changed; not just in the meetings, but in the culture.
Want to build this capacity in your organization?
UFacilitate partners with foundations, NGOs, universities, multilaterals, and local governments to help build internal leadership and facilitation skills. We offer:
- Strategic retreat and offsite planning
- Leadership coaching
- Organizational development
If you’re ready to move from top-down communication to more inclusive leadership, we can help.
- Explore our facilitation, leadership coaching, and organizational development services
- Contact us about your next retreat
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