In this guide, we'll share tips on facilitating equitable and inclusive meetings. We'll give you some key steps to ensure everyone feels included and valued during the meeting. We'll also suggest ways to get to know your participants better so you can design meetings that work well for everyone. Additionally, we'll talk about how to listen actively, create agendas that are engaging and inclusive, and build consensus respectfully.

Following these tips can create a meeting environment that encourages collaboration and helps your team achieve its objectives.

What is Equitable Facilitiation?

Leading a meeting or discussion can be daunting, especially when you have to ensure that everyone is engaged and that the conversation stays on track. This is where facilitation skills can be incredibly useful. 

Effective facilitation involves more than just managing time and agendas; it is also about being sensitive to the differences among participants, respecting their opinions, and being mindful of your biases. This approach is known as Equitable Facilitation, a skill that can be acquired through practice and experience.

With Equitable Facilitation, you can create an environment where everyone can actively contribute and where meetings are successful, inclusive, and respectful. By fostering collaboration and openness, you can help ensure that everyone feels heard, valued, and appreciated. 

Whether you are leading a small team or a large group, facilitating discussions in an equitable and inclusive manner is an essential skill that can help you achieve your goals and build stronger relationships with your colleagues.

So, how can you achieve Equitable Facilitation? Here are five tips to get you started.

1. Assess Your Baseline

Facilitating equitable and inclusive meetings requires understanding each participant's unique perspective and experience. Pre-meeting surveys and questionnaires can help you accomplish this by identifying areas where people may feel left out, confused, or disengaged. By knowing each participant's knowledge and opinions on the topic of discussion, you can plan the meeting to address these issues and create an inclusive environment. This leads to engaging, collaborative, and productive discussions and decision-making, maximizing the meeting's potential while ensuring that everyone feels valued and heard.

Creating a survey or questionnaire may seem overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be. You can use tools like Google Forms to create a short survey with a few questions to gauge everyone's knowledge and opinions on the topic of discussion. For example, if you are leading a discussion with your team about how to incorporate equity into your strategic planning, you could ask questions such as what incorporating equity in strategic planning means to them, if they have any experience with this topic, what they need to know to contribute to the discussion, and if there are any off-limit topics.

Even if some people answer "I don't know," that information is still valuable. It could indicate that the discussion point is premature and that you need to start from a different baseline first. Taking this step can help you be better prepared to facilitate the discussion because you have information that can guide it.

2. Craft Inclusive Agendas

Crafting an inclusive agenda is crucial for facilitating an equitable and inclusive meeting. To achieve this, start by clearly defining the meeting's purpose and goals and outlining the objectives you want to achieve through the meeting. Seek input from the group before the meeting to ensure that everyone feels included and has an opportunity to contribute, and plan the agenda accordingly.

During the meeting, keep track of progress, follow the agenda closely, and encourage participation and collaboration among participants. Allocate time for each item to ensure that all topics are covered. After the meeting, reflect on what worked well and what needs improvement to evaluate its effectiveness and improve future meetings.

It's important to note that achieving equitable and inclusive meetings is not only the responsibility of the facilitator. Participants must actively engage in the process, collaborate to set the meeting agenda and provide constructive feedback. This fosters increased engagement and facilitates effective group collaboration.

By being deliberate with the agenda and keeping everyone involved, you can ensure that the meeting is productive, engaging, and successful. Participants will leave the meeting feeling like their time was well spent and that they have contributed to the meeting's objectives.

3. Practicing active listening. 

When we listen to someone, we can use certain techniques to make sure we understand them better. One of these techniques is called active listening. It means we listen not just with our ears but also with our eyes and our minds. 

Active listening involves a few things. We can ask questions that let the other person give lots of information instead of just yes or no answers. We can also ask for more information if we don't understand something. We pay attention only to the conversation without being distracted by other things. We also repeat what we heard in our own words to ensure we understand correctly.

One type of question is called an open-ended question. This question has no specific answer but asks the other person to give more information. For example, instead of asking, "Do you understand group facilitation?" we could ask, "What do you think group facilitation is all about?" Or instead of asking, "Do you know what it means to be a facilitator?" we could ask, "What do you think a facilitator needs to do to be good at their job?"

By asking open-ended questions, we can help the other person share their ideas more fully. This can make the conversation more interesting and help us understand each other better.

4. Build Consensus Respectfully

When a group needs to make a decision together, it can be hard to get everyone to agree. That's where Consensus Building comes in. It's a technique that helps people work together to find a solution everyone can support.

Consensus building is all about talking things through and finding common ground. It's not about arguing or trying to get your way. Instead, it's about listening to everyone's ideas and working together to find a solution everyone can be happy with.

At Rooted Group, we use Consensus Building to help groups make decisions. We start by figuring out what everyone wants to achieve, and then we gather information to understand everyone's point of view. We use that information to help the group make a decision that everyone can agree on.

It's important to make sure everyone has a chance to share their thoughts and feelings during the process. We call this Equitable Facilitation. We recognize that people come from different backgrounds and experiences that shape how they see things. By listening to everyone and being aware of our biases, we can work together to make better decisions.

5. Sustain Engagement Over Time

It's important to regularly check whether people are still interested in a particular activity or topic. This helps individuals and organizations figure out if they're doing a good job of keeping their audience engaged. By making necessary adjustments to their strategies, they can ensure that people remain interested in what they say.

Facilitating a successful, equitable, and inclusive meeting is not an easy task. It requires careful planning, active listening, and a willingness to build consensus respectfully.

Teams can create a collaborative environment to achieve their objectives by following the tips outlined in this guide. 

By mastering these skills, you can conduct an inclusive and successful meeting where everyone feels valued and heard.