RA360: Meeting Facilitation
TL;DR
In your role, you’ll likely be called upon to run the occasional meeting–from going over procedures a first (or final) floor meeting to a regular community meeting to check-in or discuss an incident. Running effective meetings is a skill you can learn that will help in your student staff member role, as a student organization leader, or in your future career.
As a student staff member and student leader, you’ll often be called upon to run meetings and gatherings for your community and maybe also for a student club or organization you belong to. But how to your run a good meeting?
Leading vs. Facilitating
As an RA or student staff member, you’ll find yourself leading and facilitating meetings throughout your time in residence life. While the terms leading and facilitating are often used interchangeably, they refer to two different styles of guiding a meeting.
Leading a Meeting
When you’re leading a meeting, you take on a more directive role. You are responsible for setting the agenda, deciding what topics will be discussed, and guiding the conversation toward decisions or outcomes. Leading typically means you’re providing the content for the discussion, rather than helping others find their way to it.
Facilitating a Meeting
Facilitating a meeting, on the other hand, places you in the role of a neutral guide. You’re in charge of the process but not necessarily the content. Your primary job is to create an environment where all participants can share their thoughts, collaborate, and arrive at decisions or solutions on their own. Facilitators don’t typically give answers but encourage the group to find them.
Why Both Skills Matter
In your role as an RA, you may be called to both lead and facilitate meetings, depending on the situation. And sometimes you may utilize both strategies within the same meeting.
- Think about a meeting you’ve led or facilitated recently. How did you balance your role as leader vs. facilitator?
- What kind of meetings do you think you’ll facilitate most often in your RA role? When would you need to take more of a leadership role instead?
Your FIRST Community/Floor Meeting
Almost every RA and student staff member will be asked to do a “first floor” meeting. An initial meeting for your community where your residents get together for the first time.
Although your specific school may have additional or slightly different goals, the goals of a first floor meeting often include:
- Introducing yourself as a staff member
- Allowing residents to get to know one another and start building relationships and community
- Reviewing important policies and information
- Sharing opportunities to engage and get involved.
Your first floor meeting will likely be your residents’ first impression of you–and of each other. This is an important time to set up your year and how you want to be viewed and what type of community will be built. Spend some time thinking through how you want this meeting to go. If you’re feeling uneasy, ask a returning staff member. You might even think about doing a “joint” meeting with a nearby community allowing you to pair up with another staff member.
Don’t Be A Robot!
You’ll probably receive a sample agenda with lots of bullet points for you to go over, however, you don’t want to approach these meetings like a robot. Think about…
- How can my personality come though in the meeting?
- How can I establish trust, respect, and credibility?
- What tone do I want to set?
- How can I make this information I have to share interesting and memorable?
- How can I make this meeting more about my residents and less about me?
Icebreakers and Teambuilders
You may want to add an icebreaker or teambuilder activity to your meeting. But how do you select the best one? Check out our companion RA360 on the topic.
Icebreakers are typically short activities or exercises designed to help participants get to know each other, feel more comfortable in a group setting, and break down initial social barriers.
Team builders are activities or exercises specifically designed to strengthen relationships, enhance teamwork, and improve collaboration among group members.
Running a good meeting is very much related to communication and public speaking. This RA360 has you covered on how to be a better communicator.
Facilitating Meetings
“Think about meetings that you have been in…what made those meetings good, bad, boring, exciting or even memorable? Hopefully, when thinking about meetings of which you have been a part, you desire to facilitate a meeting that people will enjoy participating in and remember in a positive light. Some questions to think about when you start to plan your meeting include: What is the purpose of the meeting you are planning? How do you encourage group participation? Do you have a goal or outcome you hope to accomplish or that the group hopes to accomplish?”
Other Types of “Meetings” In Your Role
Although they’re conversations, not meetings pe se, intentional interactions do require some of the same skills you need to successfully facilitate a meeting.
If things go wrong, you may need to sit roommates down and do a mediation meeting. Mediation has a very specific skill set.
Questions To Ponder:
- What qualities make for a “good” meeting?
- How can you practice meeting or group facilitation?
RA360 Outcomes:
RAs and student staff members will be able to:
- Describe ways of successful meeting facilitation.
- Apply strategies for more successful meeting facilitation.
More To Explore
RA360 is a set of resources organized around skills, topics and competencies relevant to Resident Advisors and similar related student staff positions in college and university residence halls.
