Facilitation Skills

      Most people who work at companies have to attend meetings. However, leading meetings successfully is really difficult for many Japanese people. What are important tips to lead meaningful meetings? This week, in our seminar class, we learned facilitation skills which are useful for leading meetings smoothly, and we experienced a meeting with this skill.

      First, facilitation is a technique which makes meeting effective. Facilitators are not discussion leaders, so they need to be in a neutral position. In Japanese culture, people tend to hesitate to state opinions in front of many people but this tendency leads to meaningless discussion. Thus, facilitators should change the tendency in meetings. They should design a good atmosphere in which all of the people who attend a meeting can mention their own opinions.

      Second, as the practice for facilitation skills, we discussed what the most important thing when deciding a job is. We divided seminar students into two groups, and decided a facilitator for each groups. We wrote own opinions on stickies. Then, we categorized all of the opinions into some groups. Finally, we came to a conclusion. As I experienced the meeting, I think facilitation skills are really simple and they make it easy to make a conclusion. That is because we can classify opinions into some groups easily and incorporate every opinion into conclusion.

      Finally, our seminar has just started. I am really looking forward to learning about interpersonal communication over the next couple of years.

Yuuki Kunimoto