The Art of 'Resolving' (Landing the Session Safely)

Golden Gate Fly By - MS Flight Simulator 4.0 Mac OS 9 (CC License by Nicholas Volodimer)

As a young business consultant (known as a 'green bean' at Andersen Consulting at that time), Neil Perry, one of my early mentors, introduced a few of us to Microsoft Flight Simulator™.  It was not quite as fun as I expected, having only played computer games designed to provide instant gratification.  My experience was that it is a lot easier to get a plane off the ground without incident than it is to land. This can happen to facilitators too.

It can be exciting turning over lots of rocks and seeing what scuttles out, but what do you do next?  You need to be able to resolve the session.  'Resolving' can take many forms, more than can be covered in detail here.

Common practices finishing a session include:

• Agreeing to 'a position' that will influence future actions.
• Dividing up jobs using an action plan.
• Agreeing to disagree on some details, while agreeing to the way forward on others.
• Agreeing to meet again at some future time to keep working. 

Not all of these are going to result in people's outstanding concerns being resolved.

As there are so many alternative end points, it is good to start the session by saying what you will or hope to achieve.  You should also be vigilant for additional potential outcomes, and aware of the risk that the agreed outcome may not be achieved.

Things don't just go awry as you are landing.  They can also go out of kilter in-flight.  What seems like a useful diversion from the original topic may result in wasted time or even limit your ability to achieve your agreed outcome.  This may be because too much time has been lost; or people's attention may have become indivertibly distracted from the main agenda.  In these cases, consider some time out to break people's focus off, and give you a chance to figure out what to do next.  You may find yourself re-visiting the agreed outcome, and maybe settling for something less or different to that originally agreed.

Back to the flying metaphor, we also need to remember that no-one on this plane lives at the airport. They all need to go somewhere else after this flight, and if the flight is too traumatic, they may not get there.  Try to regulate people's trauma level.  If they seem phased by their experience of the session, talk to them afterwards, and listen to any concerns they have.  You wont always be responsible for resolving them, but you should still be respectful of them.

As they say in the airline industry, whatever situation you find yourself in, DON'T PANIC.

...Geoff
www.performancepeople.com.au

Not Finishing Quite Yet; Maybe Never Finishing

Scribbling (all rights reserved)

Urgh.  I've been here for hours.  The chairs are not comfortable. I am not enjoying the session.   The topic is wandering.  I have a strong streak of super ego saying, 'stay, you made the commitment, now stay to the end'.  The time they published to finish is long past.  (No, not 5 minutes passed, although I thought Urgh at about that time too.  No, about 35 minutes past - which is a more than 25% overrun, and counting.)  I actually need to do other things, even if my diary is blank for the next few hours.  The air is stuffy.  And they just keep going.  Why me?  Why now?

OK.  Let's get some perspective here.  All over the world there are people genuinely suffering.  I attended a school where speech night tended to go into the wee small hours.  This is good practice if I am ever approached to do a part (or worse, understudy) in 'Waiting for Godot'.  I could pull out my phone and catch up on email/Plants vs Zombies.  I could do Latin declensions in my head (if I'd paid attention at school).  I can continue to catalogue the body language of the other participants.  I could even pay attention, although I seem to be doing that, and it is not sufficiently interesting to dominate my attention.  I could doodle another 5 pointed star.  I could close my eyes, just for a moment.  No!  Don't close my eyes.  That would definitely be a mistake, compounded by my head rolling about on my shoulders, or crashing to the table.

1. Why can't they offer to let people go (if they need to go)?
2. Why can't they tell us what else they are going to do?
3. Why can't they tell us how much longer they expect to go?
4. Why can't they apologise for going past the published finish time?
5. Why can't they ask permission to keep going?
6. Why can't they start to wrap-up?
7. Why can't they suggest that we reconvene in a couple of days?
8. Why can't they ask whether a small number of people would like to reconvene in a couple of days?
9. Why can't they call a break so the ones who have to go are not embarrassed to get up and leave?
10. Why can't they finish?  Just finish.

These bullet points are not the result of a rambling mind.  (Well, maybe they are a bit.)  They are your choices when you go over the allotted time.  Whether you allotted it or someone else did, you are still responsible for the consequences of going over time.  So check the list and take appropriate action.  If you cannot or are unwilling to do the last one, do at least three of the others - any three, just make sure that they are relevant.  And if you do some things that result in us keeping going, make sure you keep it interesting and clearly on-topic, and that you finish soon.

Thank-you,

...Geoff
www.performancepeople.com.au

Finishing, Concluding, Ending, Stopping (4)

The Highlights Reel from a 10-week Series of Training Workshops
(All Rights Reserved)

In an earlier post I made reference to the way I finish up a fairly long training workshop series:  "don't just list the topics that were covered - take advantage of the opportunity to reinforce key aspects of what has been learnt".

I have been taking this approach with a leadership program called the Emerging Leadership Program at CQUniversity.  We generally have lunch with a prominent leader to conclude the program, and during lunch I run a PowerPoint loop which has key slides from each topic (see the graphic at the top of this post) and photos of the participants at work.  The photos are taken from the more 'active' activities that the participants undertake.  Also, when I ask questions like 'What is leadership?', I write the participants' answers on the whiteboard, and then photograph them to include in the PowerPoint slides.

Some slides from one of these 'highlights reels' is included above.

PowerPoint Concert Review

Stellar, who participates in the trainingzone group 'PowerPoint Users' shared details (below) of a similar approach which she calls 'a PowerPoint Concert Review':


"This works best for slides that are not full of words or content heavy - but then best practise would suggest that applies to all slides.

Make a copy of your slides from your presentation or workshop (around 20-30 slides is probably a max - that would represent 2-3 days slides for me)

Annotate each slide as if you were talking people through the sessions e.g.
'You arrived yesterday and started discussing ....'
'then we moved on to ....'

Include some reflective questions that will help people think about content e.g. 'what did you think about these 3 features of... '

Each slide needs some a message at the top -  make the message look a bit different to any other writing on your slides so it stands out.

Automate all the slides so they automatically move on after a fixed time - I find about 8-9 seconds is about right.

Then add an additional slide at the beginning inviting people to sit back, relax and enjoy the show - leave this one controlled by a mouse click so you can move it on when you are ready.  And another at the end asking them to reflect on what they have learned/ understood/ want to know more about - depends on your purpose.

You can either record a piece of music to run with the Powerpoint or I find it easier to just switch on a CD - usually more reliable than fancy AV equipment

Use a piece of reflective music - no words - 60 beats per minute has been found to be most effective.

Sit back and watch everyone go back in time to the beginning of your session - I've had really powerful responses from people, including tears and rounds of applause.  Almost everyone is amazed at how much they've covered.

Reviewing is one of the key features of helping people to learn or absorb information and this is a great way to do it particularly if you're short of time.  I did it in 5 minutes at the end of a very full 'Communicating to Influence' workshop the other day.  That just gave everyone time to reflect before filling in their action plans."


(Thank-you for permission to use this content Stellar.)

...Geoff
www.performancepeople.com.au

Finishing, Concluding, Ending, Stopping (3)

In finishing, different types of sessions call for different approaches, such as:

• If you are wrapping up a training session, don't just list the topics that were covered.  Take advantage of the opportunity to reinforce key aspects of what has been learnt.
• If it was a session in which people provided input, let them know what will be done with what you have collected, and about any ongoing involvement they can have.
• If you presented information, give people an opportunity to ask questions.  (Don't scrimp here - a pet hate of my friend and colleague Claire Rodgers at Fitzroy Basin Association is leaving insufficient time for questions that do justice to your topic.)
• If you set homework during the session, remind participants of the homework.
• If people volunteered to do something, remind them of their commitment.
• If there is one really important message in what you have communicated, finish by restating the message.

...Geoff
www.performancepeople.com.au

Finishing, Concluding, Ending, Stopping (2)

Depending on the circumstances, you may tell the participants that the session is finished.  In other cases, it might be appropriate to ask the people in attendance whether it has finished.  The more unstructured the session, the more likely that you could use the latter approach.

Don't be afraid to say that it is finished if people appear to not be willing to let go.  You can do this by stating that anyone who wants to continue discussing the topic of the session is welcome to stick around.  That lets other people know that they can go.

...Geoff
www.performancepeople.com.au

Finishing, Concluding, Ending, Stopping (1)

Concluding a session can be tricky.  Sometimes it is just a matter of recognising that the session is finished.

Ted Scott, a business leader in my community, has been heard to say, "I think that we actually finished a while ago, we just haven't stopped yet." Don't go on and on and on.  Draw discussion to a close.  If people want to keep talking, give them the opportunity to do that while letting others go.

In other cases, you need to draw the session to a logical conclusion.  Don't expect this to just happen.  As the facilitator, you need to bring it to a close.

...Geoff
www.performancepeople.com.au