Custom Meeting Facilitation

This closing module helps participants reflect on a day of custom meeting facilitation training and turn what they learned into concrete next steps. Participants individually reflect on their personal performance and the group's performance, share one takeaway with a partner, then each commit to a specific concept they feel confident about, along with a concrete action and completion date.

This opening module sets the tone and working principles for a custom-built meeting facilitation session. Participants first examine Apple's marketing philosophy of Empathy, Focus, and Impute as a discussion prompt for establishing the guiding principles of the day, then move into a rotating small-group warm-up. Built around a specific business review of streaming/media growth opportunities (AVOD, ad-free VOD, original programming, add-ons, partnerships, and new markets tied to 2020 goals), the warm-up format generalizes to any session that needs to warm up a room, surface early opinions, and connect prior pre-work to the day's agenda. In groups of three, participants rotate through each opportunity, discussing effort required, impact on goals, and open questions, and post lingering questions on shared flip charts before switching groups.

This module gives teams a structured way to prioritize competing opportunities and turn those priorities into committed action. Participants first use the 2020 Vision exercise to surface the benefits of each opportunity and force-rank them head-to-head as a group, building consensus on what matters most. They then use a Who/What/When matrix to translate the top priorities into specific ownership, deliverables, and deadlines that individuals commit to in front of their peers.

This module uses a physical voting exercise called Agree/Disagree Distance to surface where a group stands on contested issues before debate begins. A statement is read aloud and participants physically position themselves along a spectrum to show their level of agreement or disagreement, making differences of opinion immediately visible. The exercise is built around a healthcare off-site scenario (two clinical groups deciding how and whether to collaborate on shared initiatives), and the structure generalizes to any meeting where a group needs to align on direction, priorities, or scope before committing to a plan.

This module uses a "speed dating" format to crowdsource people management best practices across topics like leading teams through change, team bonding and culture building, driving communication from the top down, employee recognition, and core values. Working in small teams, participants research a topic across three lenses ??? current components/challenges, key characters and relationships, and outside context/solutions ??? then rotate through short paired interviews to exchange findings. Teams distill their conversations into key takeaways on sticky notes, which the full group organizes into themes on a shared board. A closing discussion invites participants to share what they learned, what surprised them, and what personal action they'll commit to.

This module teaches participants to distill a business opportunity into a clear, structured elevator pitch. Working from an opportunity generated earlier in the session, participants answer targeting questions (target customer, customer need, opportunity name, market category, key benefit, competition, unique differentiator) and plug the answers into a standard pitch sentence structure: "For (target customer) who has (customer need), (product name) is a (market category) that (one key benefit). Unlike (competition), the product (unique differentiator)." Participants then compare pitches across the group, vote on favorites, and discuss where descriptions of the same opportunity converged or diverged and what that reveals about the opportunity's clarity.

This module helps a leadership group define a shared vision state for their team or organization and translate it into concrete development priorities. Participants brainstorm words and phrases describing their desired future state on individual post-its, then work together to cluster these ideas into broader themes, or "epics." From there, the group converts each epic into specific skills to develop, which become the basis for future workshop content. Built around a custom meeting facilitation context for a specific leadership group; the process generalizes to any team looking to align on vision and turn it into an actionable development plan.

This module teaches the 4 C's framework ??? Components, Characteristics, Considerations, and Characters ??? as a structured way for teams to research and organize information about a new business opportunity. Built around a Philo-specific opportunity-exploration scenario; the structure generalizes to any situation where a team needs to quickly gather and synthesize information about a new initiative. Participants work in assigned teams, each responsible for one "C," planning an information-gathering strategy, interviewing others in the room, and organizing findings into a 2x2 matrix. Groups then present their findings to each other and discuss common themes and priorities that emerge.

This module teaches Brainwriting, a silent, written idea-generation technique used to build on themes surfaced in a Start/Stop/Continue discussion. Working from a specific meeting-facilitation scenario, participants pick a concept, workflow, or idea they feel strongly about, write it on a sticky note, and generate ideal-state ideas using the prompt "Wouldn't it be great if..." The technique generalizes to any group setting where you need to surface a wide range of ideas quickly without discussion or judgment slowing the process down.

This module helps participants clarify and communicate their organization's strategic vision by translating it into visual form rather than words. Working solo, participants sketch their vision as images and symbols, then share and stress-test those drawings in small groups, surfacing what's obvious, surprising, or confusing to others. The module closes with a group debrief identifying common themes across everyone's visions and clarifying next steps for each person's own vision.

No exercises in this module.