Chapter Four

Knowing Your Participants

Getting to know the people you’ll be working with is an essential first step in designing any effective meeting. Before you facilitate, you need to know whether the people coming to the meeting are:

• __ total strangers who have never met before and won’t be together again after this single, special-purpose meeting
• __ total strangers or people who only have a passing acquaintance with each other, but who will be working together again after this meeting
• __ a group of people who know each other, have interacted for some time, and get along well
• __ a group in turmoil who meet periodically and either spin their wheels in frustration or become embroiled in conflicts that are rarely resolved
• __ a high-performance team with a solid track record of achievements, made up of members with highly developed people skills who are good at managing their internal group dynamics