Guided discussions are a type of structured exercise that enable meeting leaders to ask the group a series of planned questions designed to get them to wrestle with topics and issues at a deeper level. As they answer the questions, the facilitator summarizes their content and may also play devil’s advocate to drive for deeper content or application, and guides the discussion to the next question.

Storytelling

Storytelling is an interesting, proven, and inexpensive way to prepare examples from your own experiences. Stories are often memorable, people like to hear them, and they tend to be a useful technique to capture an audience’s attention and illustrate key points.

We all know presenters, facilitators, and meeting leaders who seem to have an innate ability to tell stories. They are able to pull out an appropriate tale, with a poignant message, just right for the situation or group at hand. The art of good storytelling is a learned skill that comes with practice. You can start a story to get discussions going and leave the rest of the story for later. Or, you can begin the story and then ask the group, “What do you think happened next?”

When thinking through story development, remember a good story has a beginning and an end. Consider the best point in time to begin your story, and develop an engaging start to draw in participants. Think about the pinnacle moments in the story, and how you can leverage them for maximum impact. And of course, your story should have a natural and clear ending. Practice telling the story a few times prior to the meeting.

Perhaps the most important characteristic of an effective storyteller is the ability to remain authentic—meaning, staying true to your own stories and maintaining the integrity of stories you select to retell. This means sharing truthful and relevant facts and detail.

Avoid “Winging It”

Winging it with examples and stories doesn’t work. You can get off schedule in a big way. If you select a story to tell on the spot, you might be stealing your thunder for a later content point. You might get to the end and discover that the main point isn’t really relevant to the content at hand. Some meeting leaders even get to the end of a spur-of-the-moment story and realize that not only does it not make a point, but also that the punch line is offensive. Think through your telling of examples and stories.

Humor

Humor and laughter help improve, maintain, and enhance participant interest in a meeting. Camaraderie begins to develop when the leader and participants share a pun, story, or other common experience. Humor fosters a “team” atmosphere and promotes a positive experience.

Here are some tips for using humor, jokes, and funny stories during facilitation sessions:

The humorous item must be relevant to the session topics and discussion at hand. Telling a story or joke just for fun takes the meeting off track.

Avoid humor that might offend or alienate participants. Make sure your joke or story is clean. Perhaps this cautionary note seems obvious, but for some leaders, it isn’t. Using even mild curse words is offensive to some participants and makes you look unprofessional. Don’t think that if your audience swears, you can too. Part of your role as a meeting leader is to model professional behavior.

Laugh at yourself, particularly when a story or pun flops. This puts the participants at ease and indicates that you are comfortable with the group and self-confident about your skills in leading meetings.

Quotations

Quotations from others that are strategically planned in the beginning, middle, or end of the meeting often have the effect of stimulating people’s thinking. Before you use a quote, though, be sure of its authenticity—especially if you found it online—and its relevance to the subject matter. When you use a quote, always give attribution to the appropriate source.

Metaphors

Metaphors, as well as analogies and anecdotes, are thought-provoking forms of speech that open people’s minds to think differently about a subject or issue. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.

One presenter at a career development seminar used the New York marathon as a metaphor for the effort involved in searching for a new job. As he painted a picture in the minds of his audience of the daunting task of running the marathon, he explained that conducting a job search was similar because those who are successful in completing the journey in the shortest time are always the ones who spend the most time preparing themselves.

Analogies

An analogy is a resemblance in some particulars between things otherwise unlike. Analogies, like metaphors, often help paint a picture in people’s minds that help people to “see” concepts or ideas more clearly. One meeting leader, wanting to lay the foundation for introducing the agenda with regard to a new financial reporting system, used this analogy: “My understanding is that trying to reconcile the old monthly financial reports was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle only to find some of the pieces missing.” Nodding their heads in agreement, the participants became eager, wanting to learn more about this new, less frustrating system and the project.

Developing the meeting outline is to plan the activities that will guide the group to achieving the desired outcomes. For example, an outcome might be for the group to create a list of 10 suggestions to assess the current morale of a particular department. As you are designing the meeting outline, select the most appropriate tool or technique to lead to the desired outcome.

Successful leaders leverage myriad facilitation techniques and master when to use a particular technique as much as how to use it. Some basic techniques include:

Listening

If you expect the group members to actively participate, then you need to be sure to listen to what they are saying. After posing a question, pause and give them time to think and formulate their responses. When someone begins to respond, avoid assuming that you know what he or she is going to say. Nothing dampens a group’s discussions faster than a leader who interrupts or jumps to hasty conclusions about a particular point—which may be incorrect. Pose a question, give the audience time to think, and then truly listen to participant input.

Questioning techniques

Using various questioning techniques is probably the most common way to encourage participation from a group—and is a skill that serves business professionals both inside and outside of a meeting room. There are several types of questions, including open-ended, close-ended, hypothetical, and rhetorical. The ability to ask strong questions requires skill, practice, and planning.

Accepting different opinions and views

If you are asking for ideas, comments, and thoughts on a topic, then be prepared for views that differ from yours. If you don’t agree with something, be sure that you do not leave the audience with the impression that you agree or that the information is correct if it is not. If answers to questions aren’t quite on target, then redirect the question and open it up to others by asking, “What do the rest of you think?”

Silence

Silence is an effective meeting technique and one that novice leaders often struggle with the most. Pausing enables the group to process what you are saying and to form their own thoughts and opinions.

Some additional considerations that you might want to include when creating your detailed agenda and notes to lead the meeting are guided discussion, storytelling, humor, quotations, metaphors, and analogies.

Use this job aid as a reminder of the tips and strategies for improving communication, cooperation, and trust when building team cohesion.
Communicating within your team

• Create a sense of partnership.
• Express your desire to work as a team.
• Assume good intentions.
• Don't retaliate.
• Move forward.
• Talk to each other.
• Get to know one another.

Promoting cooperation

• Put the team's needs first.
• Accept unpleasant tasks with a positive attitude.
• Discourage competition.
• Be proactive in finding ways to help the team.
• Consider the team's success as your own.
• Encourage others to adopt a collaborative approach.

Building trust

• Be supportive of your teammates.
• Acknowledge their skills and their contributions.
• Show you trust your teammates by involving them.
• Help teammates learn new skills.
• Give others responsibility and let them make decisions.
• Be truthful when communicating.
• Take responsibility for your actions.
• Share responsibility for the actions of your teammates.
• Act consistently.
• Follow through on promises.
• Say what you mean and mean what you say.
• Give and receive constructive feedback.
• Admit mistake.
• Perceive everyone's mistakes, including your own, as team mistakes.
• Maintain confidentiality.
• "Walk the talk."

The "Be a STAR" method of building trust divides the necessary trust-building behaviors into four action areas:
Be supportive

• Support your teammates.
• Acknowledge the skills and contributions of teammates.
• Demonstrate loyalty to your team.
• Give credit where it's due.
• Show you value your teammates' input.
• Let team members know you think they're competent.
• Involve your teammates in what you're doing.
• Help team members learn new skills.
• Give other team members responsibility.
• Let team members make decisions for themselves.
• Avoid speaking badly about teammates to non-team members.

Be truthful

• Be trustworthy in your communications.
• Say what you mean and mean what you say.
• Give constructive feedback.
• Admit mistakes.
• Maintain confidences.

Be accountable

• Don't shift the blame to someone else.
• Admit and take responsibility for your mistakes.
• Perceive everyone's mistakes, including your own, as team mistakes.
• Share the responsibility for everyone's actions.
• Address problems as a team.
• Learn from mistakes and then move on.

Be reliable

• Be consistent in matters both large and small.
• Follow through on commitments.
• Walk the talk.

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Using cohesion-building techniques

Cohesive teams are unified, allowing members to work together in productive harmony. True cohesiveness is only possible when members cooperate with each other, acting together to further the team's goals. Cohesion also requires mutual respect and trust, and it has effective communication at its base.

• When team members are showing signs of good communication, they're willing to work together as a team and they value each other's skills and abilities. Instead of being offended by ambiguous comments, they assume the best intentions and respond positively.
• Poor cooperation is evident when people do things like try to avoid tasks such as writing up monthly evaluations. To deal with a cooperation shortage on the your team, you should encourage members to adopt a more collaborative approach, pointing out that what's good for the team is good for each individual as well.
• The third element of cohesiveness is trust. When your team doesn't have a lack of trust, members exchange ideas freely and appreciate each other's skills and contributions.

To increase team cohesion, you first identify which areas need help based on the various indicators of poor communication, lack of cooperation, and lack of trust. You then apply the appropriate strategies for improving each area.

The three main elements of team cohesion – communication, cooperation, and trust – must all be optimally present for a strong team to develop. Various indicators can point to which of the three elements you need to address. By applying strategies targeted at the particular element, you can achieve true unity and cohesiveness, which will in turn take the team to new heights.

The importance of trust
Trust is the confident reliance in the character, abilities, and actions of others. When you trust someone, you believe she will behave in a certain way based on both your personal feelings about her and the available evidence.
So trust has both an emotional and an intellectual component. Your general feelings about someone, your comfort level with the way he behaves, and your intuition about his character all affect your decision to trust.

• The emotional component of trust becomes obvious when trust is broken. Few emotions are stronger than the feeling of being betrayed.
• The intellectual part of trust involves logically assessing both the situation and the person you're trusting. You decide to trust someone partly based on actual data, such as past actions, past performance, or qualifications.

Distrust is a natural reaction to a lack of this sort of information. If you don't know a person or his intentions, and if his way of doing things seems odd or even bizarre to you, you may be reluctant to give him your trust.
To keep your team from developing a trust-deficient atmosphere, you need to apply strategies for building trust. But trust can be difficult to achieve in a team situation. To trust someone else, you must relinquish some control of your own destiny, putting control in someone else's hands and making yourself vulnerable.
When you trust, you not only count on your teammates to get the job done, you rely on them to do so in ways you approve of. This experience of trusting others is what binds team members together. Once trust has been given and shown to be justified, the relationship is strengthened and the sense of belonging to a team is enhanced. Only then will the team be able to have an open exchange of ideas and the freedom to take appropriate risks.
It becomes even harder to trust when you're in a virtual team situation, because trust is based on being able to understand and predict the behavior of your teammates. In a multicultural virtual team, differences in customs, speech, and etiquette – combined with a lack of face-to-face interaction – make trusting all the more challenging.
In any relationship, trust is a vital element that takes time to develop and yet no time at all to lose. Once lost, trust is difficult to regain. While it may have taken only a single untrustworthy act for trust to disappear, it may take years of trustworthy behavior to regain even a fraction of the former relationship. Think of the emotionally charged words associated with breach of trust – traitor, deserter, cheat, liar, informant, and spy.
Ways to build trust
To build trust, the other basic elements for team cohesiveness – good communication and cooperation – need to be present. One way of summing up what's needed is the "Be a STAR" method of building trust, which divides the necessary behaviors into four action areas:

• The S in STAR stands for being supportive of your teammates and loyal to your team as a group. When you demonstrate team loyalty, you help create an intimate, friendly, and supportive atmosphere where creativity can flourish and people feel safe being themselves. To build trust, recognize your teammates' accomplishments and give credit where it's due. Show you value their input and believe them to be competent. Show you trust your fellow team members by involving them, helping them learn new skills, giving them responsibility, and letting them make decisions for themselves. Team members should never bad-mouth one another behind their backs.
• The T in STAR stands for being truthful, which applied broadly means you must be trustworthy in your communications. Your teammates know they can rely on you when you say what you mean and mean what you say. They'll share information with you when you're known as someone who gives and receives constructive feedback, admits mistakes, and maintains confidentiality.
• The A in STAR represents being accountable. Trust grows when team members admit and take responsibility for their mistakes. The point isn't to get down on yourself, but rather take an honest look at what went wrong and move ahead based on what you've learned. This kind of behavior shows that you're someone who can be relied upon, rather than someone who will try to shift the blame to someone else. You need to perceive everyone's mistakes, including your own, as team mistakes. Share the responsibility for everyone's actions and address problems together, as a team. Being accountable sets the tone for communication trust. It creates an environment where team members feel good about taking necessary risks.
• The R in STAR stands for being reliable. When trying to build trust on a team, you need to demonstrate to your teammates that they can rely on you to be consistent in matters both large and small. Predictability builds trust, while unpredictability makes people nervous. When team members are sure what your response will be, they'll trust you more. Demonstrate your reliability by following through on commitments and "walking the talk."

Trust is at the very foundation of team effectiveness. It's vital for a team to have an atmosphere where people feel comfortable taking action, putting forth ideas, and taking the right sort of risks. Losing your teammates' trust is easy. It can happen with a single untrustworthy act. Building trust, on the other hand, is hard work. And regaining it after it's been lost is even more difficult. One way to build trust on your team is through the "Be a STAR" approach. This method focuses on supporting your teammates, being truthful with them, being accountable for actions as a team, and acting in a consistent way that your teammates can rely on.

Team members need to cooperate to get the job done, whatever that job may be. You can apply three simple strategies to promote cooperation among your team members:

• when deciding how to approach work, put the team's needs first because, in the long run, that's what's best for you too
• accept and perform unpleasant tasks with a positive attitude and try to get others to do the same, and
• discourage competition, which is usually unhealthy for building a cohesive team

Putting the team's needs first

To put the team's needs first, it's best to develop the habit of acting unselfishly. When someone asks you to go above and beyond your own responsibilities, your answer should be "yes."

Proactively searching for ways to help the team is another effective strategy for increasing cooperation and building cohesion. To be proactive means finding ways to help the team that go beyond simply reacting to a need or an assignment. If you have spare time, offer to help others on the team. Or you could identify and pre-emptively tackle a potential problem in order to make the team's work easier in the long run.

Accepting unpleasant tasks positively

Most people know that working with others on a team involves accepting your share of unpleasant tasks. But an important strategy for building cooperation is to take on those tasks with a positive attitude.

If you accept the task with a smile instead of a grumble, you'll demonstrate that the team's needs are more important than your own. Others will notice your actions and follow suit, creating a more cooperative atmosphere.

It's clear that if team members most often respond to an unpleasant task by trying to get out of it or by just saying "no," there's a lack of cooperation. But simply agreeing to perform an unwanted task doesn't guarantee a cooperative environment. If people say "yes" but continue to complain about having to perform the task, your team may have cooperation issues.

Discouraging competition

Some corporate management styles use competition as a motivator, offering rewards if an individual or a team becomes the number one performer or meets certain goals.

Some corporate cultures encourage competition, some tasks lend themselves to it, and some individuals are just naturally competitive. But to the extent that competition among team members inhibits cooperation, it works against team efforts and affects team cohesiveness.

By definition, teams are made up of members who collaborate – that is, they work for a mutual win, not individual advancement. If another team member is out for personal advantage, how can you trust that person to do what's good for the team?

When members show signs of competitiveness – either overtly by challenging others on the team or in more subtle ways – both cooperation and cohesion are at risk. Your strategies in this case should be the following:

• consider the team's success as your own – If you act as if the team's overall well-being and success are the measure of your personal success, competitiveness is out the door. The belief that the eventual success of the team is more important than small individual successes is a solid foundation for cooperation. It will encourage the sharing of resources and knowledge.
• encourage others to adopt a collaborative approach – Rather than competing with someone on your team, ask that person to work with you. When the two of you combine your resources and knowledge, you'll make the team stronger. Your teammates are your partners, not your enemies. Demonstrate your appreciation of your teammates and make sure to give credit when it's due.

Accomplishing team goals and making your team a cohesive unit requires effective communication, mutual trust, and the ability to cooperate. How you approach your work has a great effect on your team's cooperative atmosphere, whether you're a team leader or simply a team member.

By putting the team's needs above your own when the two conflict, you set a cooperative tone. To keep that atmosphere of cooperation, you need to take on all tasks – pleasant and unpleasant – with a positive attitude and avoid any signs of competitiveness.