You won't always have a facilitator in the room
Watch a real meeting get planned, live
Andrés Marquez-Lara takes a real situation from someone in the room and coaches them through it, live, with everyone watching. The full session is here, so you can watch it again with your own next meeting in mind.
What this session is about
This was a live, interactive session with Andrés Marquez-Lara, founder of UFacilitate. He shared some of the core things he’s learned about facilitation, which he describes as connection: with yourself, with the people around you, and with the purpose you’re all there for.
The first fifteen minutes explain why meetings carry so much weight right now. Work has lost most of its old structure, and what holds a team together is how people treat each other. A lot of that shows up in meetings. Then the session gets practical.
A participant volunteered a meeting she was planning, and Andrés worked through it out loud. You hear the questions he asks first, where he slows down, and how a plan that looked fine at the start turns into a better one in about twenty minutes.
Worth an hour if you're in one of these spots
A meeting is coming up and it matters more than the agenda says
You’ve got too much on your plate already, and this one can’t be winged. You’d like to walk in knowing what it’s for.
The people in the room want different things
Board, grantees, staff, partners. You’re the one holding it together, and you’d rather they felt heard than managed.
Your team gets two days together and needs something to show for it
Not a nice retreat. A group that leaves clearer, with decisions that stick past Monday.
Take the questions with you
Andrés promised everyone in the room two things. They’re yours too.
The next meeting prep guide
The questions Andrés asked in the hot seat, and more. Work through your own meeting on your own, at your own pace.
Facilitating Leadership: a quick and easy guide to leading with brain, heart & soul
Andrés’s book, free to access. It includes the facilitation wheel a few people singled out after the session.
YOUR FACILITATOR
Andrés Marquez-Lara
Andrés is a therapist by training, an improv actor and a community organizer. He founded UFacilitate, a global facilitation company with a network of around 200 facilitators in 40 countries, and he wrote Facilitating Leadership.
The work is mostly with foundations, international nonprofits and multilaterals. He likes to describe it as Airbnb meets Deloitte meets Rumi the poet: soulful, and it gets things done.
His starting point is that transformation begins with relationships, and meetings are where a lot of them get made or lost.
Have a meeting of your own coming up?
Bring it to a conversation with Andrés. Tell him who’s in the room, what it’s for, and how much time you have. Those are the three questions he started with in the session, and they’re a good place to begin.
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