Title: Meeting Facilitation — LearnCoachAssist

Q: What is meeting facilitation?
A: Meeting facilitation is the deliberate design and guidance of a discussion so the group stays focused, participates well, and leaves with clear outcomes.

Q: What is the most important thing to define before a meeting?
A: Define the outcome: what decision, alignment, or next step the group should achieve by the end.

Q: Why should every meeting have an agenda?
A: An agenda sets expectations, keeps the discussion on track, and helps participants prepare meaningful input in advance.

Q: What makes an agenda effective?
A: A strong agenda names the goal, lists topics in order, assigns time boxes, and clarifies who owns each section.

Q: What is the role of a facilitator?
A: The facilitator manages the process of the meeting, not the content alone. They guide flow, participation, and decisions.

Q: Why is a meeting brief useful?
A: A brief gives participants context before the meeting so more time can be spent deciding and solving rather than catching up.

Q: What is a time box?
A: A time box is a fixed amount of time assigned to a topic to prevent drift and keep the group moving.

Q: What is the difference between discussion and decision?Discussion explores ideas
A: decision means the group chooses a direction, owner, or next step.

Q: Why should you start with the decision to be made?
A: Naming the decision early helps people focus their comments on what the group actually needs to resolve.

Q: What is a parking lot in facilitation?
A: A parking lot is a list of important side topics that should be captured but handled later so they do not derail the current agenda.

Q: How do you encourage quieter participants to contribute?
A: Invite them in with specific prompts, allow written input first, and create space before louder voices dominate.

Q: How do you handle someone who talks too much in a meeting?
A: Acknowledge the contribution, summarize it, and redirect with a question like, "Let's hear from someone who sees it differently."

Q: Why are meeting norms important?
A: Norms create shared expectations around turn-taking, focus, device use, and how disagreement will be handled.

Q: What is a round-robin facilitation technique?
A: Round-robin means giving each participant a brief turn to respond so everyone has a chance to contribute.

Q: What is dot voting?
A: Dot voting is a quick prioritization method where participants allocate a limited number of votes across options.

Q: What is the difference between consensus and unanimity?Consensus means people can support or live with the decision
A: unanimity means everyone fully agrees.

Q: Why should facilitators summarize often?
A: Frequent summaries reduce confusion, confirm shared understanding, and make it easier to spot disagreement early.

Q: What is a decision log?
A: A decision log is a record of what was decided, why, and who owns the next actions.

Q: What is a RACI check useful for in meetings?
A: It clarifies who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed so work does not stall after the meeting.

Q: What should happen in the last five minutes of a meeting?
A: Review decisions, confirm owners and deadlines, and restate the immediate next steps.

Q: Why are action items often missed?
A: Action items fail when owners, deadlines, or success criteria are vague.

Q: What is asynchronous pre-work?
A: Asynchronous pre-work means participants review context or add input before the meeting so live time can focus on synthesis and decisions.

Q: How do you facilitate conflict productively in a meeting?
A: Name the tension, refocus on the shared goal, separate facts from opinions, and ask what evidence or assumptions need testing.

Q: What is facilitation neutrality?
A: Neutrality means the facilitator protects the process fairly, even if they have a viewpoint on the content.

Q: How can visuals improve facilitation?
A: Visuals like agendas, decision trees, and shared notes reduce ambiguity and help the group stay aligned.

Q: What is a retrospective question after a meeting?
A: "What helped this meeting work, and what should we change next time?"

Q: What makes a meeting worth having at all?
A: A meeting is worth having when live interaction will create better alignment, speed, or decision quality than async communication alone.

Q: What is a facilitation opener?
A: A short start-of-meeting frame that reminds people of the purpose, agenda, and expected result.

Q: Why should facilitators restate ground rules?
A: Restating them early reduces ambiguity and makes it easier to intervene when the discussion drifts.

Q: What is stack management in facilitation?
A: It is keeping track of who wants to speak next so airtime feels fair and predictable.

Q: How do you recover when a meeting loses focus?
A: Pause, summarize where the conversation drifted, and redirect the group to the original outcome.

Q: What is a decision owner?
A: The decision owner is the person accountable for making or finalizing a choice once input has been gathered.

Q: Why does pre-reading improve meetings?
A: It shifts factual updates out of live time so the group can spend more time on judgment, trade-offs, and decisions.

Q: What is the role of a note taker in facilitated meetings?
A: They capture decisions, action items, open questions, and context so follow-through is easier.

Q: How can a facilitator make disagreement safer?
A: By normalizing dissent, separating ideas from people, and inviting evidence instead of personal attacks.

Q: What is a useful prompt when energy is low?
A: "What is the most important thing we need to resolve before we leave this room?"

Q: What is a check-in question?
A: A short opening prompt that gets everyone participating early, such as "What outcome matters most to you today?"

Q: What is a check-out question?
A: A closing prompt that surfaces final concerns or commitments, such as "What are you leaving with?"

Q: Why do meetings need explicit owners?
A: Because shared understanding without ownership often leads to no action after the meeting ends.

Q: What is agenda drift?
A: Agenda drift happens when the meeting spends too much time on issues that do not serve the stated purpose.

Q: How can facilitators use time warnings well?
A: Give clear signals like "two minutes left on this topic" so the group can tighten discussion intentionally.

Q: What is a decision criterion?
A: A decision criterion is a standard the group agrees to use when comparing options, such as speed, cost, or customer impact.

Q: What is the benefit of writing the question on screen?
A: A visible question keeps everyone anchored on the same problem and reduces side conversations.

Q: How should a facilitator handle repetition?
A: Acknowledge the repeated point, capture it once, and move the group to what remains unresolved.

Q: What is facilitation by synthesis?
A: It is the practice of combining multiple comments into a clear summary that moves the conversation forward.

Q: What is a good intervention for dominance?
A: "Let's pause there and hear from two people we haven't heard from yet."

Q: What is a silent brainstorm?
A: A short period where participants write ideas individually before discussing them, reducing anchoring and louder-voice bias.

Q: Why can voting be helpful?
A: Voting helps a group surface preferences quickly when many options are on the table.

Q: When is consensus not the goal?
A: When speed, accountability, or role clarity matter more than full agreement from every participant.

Q: What is the facilitator's closing responsibility?
A: Ensure the meeting ends with a clear summary, named owners, and visible next steps.

Q: What is the facilitator's first move in the opening five minutes of a meeting?
A: Re-state the purpose, the decision or outcome needed, the agenda, and the time available so everyone is anchored before content begins.

Q: What are the four classic agenda blocks a well-designed meeting follows?
A: Purpose and outcomes, context or pre-read recap, discussion and decision, action review and closing — in that order.

Q: What is a meeting's "desired outcome" written as?
A: A single sentence describing the observable result of the meeting, e.g. "We leave with a chosen vendor and a named implementation owner."

Q: What is the difference between an outcome and a topic?
A: A topic is what the meeting will discuss; an outcome is what the meeting will produce. Topics without outcomes usually produce no decision.

Q: Why is "be back by 5pm" a poor meeting framing?
A: It states a constraint, not an outcome. The group leaves without knowing what they were supposed to produce or decide.

Q: What is a meeting charter?
A: A short document that names the meeting's purpose, audience, cadence, owner, success metrics, and the decision rights it has.

Q: What is the 1-3-5 rule for meeting design?
A: One purpose, at most three outcomes, and decisions or actions expected within five working days of the meeting ending.

Q: What is a decision framework?
A: A pre-agreed set of criteria (cost, risk, time, customer impact) the group will use to compare options, so debate focuses on trade-offs not preferences.

Q: What is a "Type 1 vs Type 2 decision" framework from facilitation?
A: Type 1 decisions are reversible and should be made quickly to learn; Type 2 are hard to reverse and deserve more analysis and caution.

Q: When should a Type 1 decision be made in a meeting?
A: Near the start, so the group can move on and learn from the result rather than spend meeting time perfecting a reversible call.

Q: When is a Type 2 decision appropriate for live discussion?
A: When the cost of delay exceeds the cost of a wrong call, or when the meeting has the right expertise, data, and authority to decide.

Q: What is the RAPID decision framework?
A: A Bain & Company model with five roles: Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, Decide — used to make accountability for a decision explicit before debate starts.

Q: Who is the "D" in RAPID?
A: The single person who makes the final call after input has been collected; without a named D, decisions stall.

Q: What is a DACI framework?
A: A model with Driver, Approver, Contributors, Informed — used to clarify who drafts, who signs off, who advises, and who gets told.

Q: What is the difference between Driver and Approver in DACI?
A: The Driver organizes the work and gathers input; the Approver is the single accountable decision-maker. They are usually different people.

Q: What is consent-based decision making?
A: A model where a proposal passes when no one has a reasoned, blocking objection — used in sociocratic and agile facilitation.

Q: When is consent-based decision making most useful?
A: When the group needs fast, good-enough calls, values inclusion over unanimity, and can tolerate iteration.

Q: What is a "blocking objection" in consent decision making?
A: A reasoned concern that, if unaddressed, would harm the organization or team — not a personal preference.

Q: What is fist-to-five voting?
A: A quick poll where each person holds up 0–5 fingers to show their level of support; 3+ generally signals consent, 1–2 calls for more discussion.

Q: What is a thumbs-up / sideways / down check?
A: A simple pulse where down means "I can't support this," sideways means "I can live with it," up means "I actively endorse."

Q: What is the difference between diverging and converging in a meeting?
A: Diverging expands options without judgment; converging narrows them toward a choice. Mixing them is the most common cause of muddy decisions.

Q: What is a good facilitation rule of thumb about diverging and converging?
A: Don't try to evaluate options while still generating them. Separate the two modes by time, room, or activity.

Q: What is a "silent start"?
A: An opener where participants read the agenda or prompt and write initial thoughts alone for 2–3 minutes before anyone speaks.

Q: What is the 2-minute rule in facilitation?
A: If a discussion has gone 2 minutes with no new information, summarize, name the tension, and move the group to a decision step.

Q: What is the "parking lot" rule of use?
A: Only park items that are genuinely important and not on the current agenda — and assign each parked item an owner to revisit later.

Q: What is an "off-agenda" item in facilitation?
A: A topic that surfaces during the meeting which is important but does not serve the current outcome; it is captured for a future meeting or async thread.

Q: How should a facilitator close a parked item?
A: Restate it aloud, name who owns it, name when or where it will be handled, and confirm it is captured in the notes.

Q: What is a clear-and-complete action item?
A: One phrased as "[verb] [object] by [date] owned by [name], with success criteria visible to the group."

Q: Why should action items be reviewed aloud at the end of a meeting?
A: Because unspoken commitments decay — reading them back surfaces ambiguity, overload, and forgotten ownership before people leave the room.

Q: What is a "next-action" check?
A: A closing routine where each participant states their single next step, often used in operational stand-ups and 1:1s.

Q: What is the "decisions, actions, owners, dates" closing template?
A: DAOD — a four-column close that forces every decision to leave the room with an owner and a date, not just a topic of conversation.

Q: What is the most common cause of "no decision" meetings?
A: Skipping or rushing the converging phase — the group discusses at length but never narrows options, votes, or assigns a decision-maker.

Q: What is the difference between a standup and a status meeting?
A: A standup is a short, time-boxed sync focused on blockers and next actions; a status meeting is a longer broadcast of updates that often belongs in async.

Q: What is the ideal length of a daily standup?
A: 15 minutes total, roughly one minute per person, with any deeper conversation parked for a follow-up.

Q: What is the "elephant in the room" technique?
A: Naming the obvious unspoken tension early so it can be discussed rather than allowed to distort the rest of the meeting.

Q: What is "steelmanning"?
A: Restating an opposing view in its strongest form before responding — used to keep disagreement rigorous and respectful.

Q: What is a strawman proposal?
A: A deliberately rough first proposal used to surface reactions and improve the idea, rather than a final ask.

Q: What is the "1-2-4-all" facilitation method from Liberating Structures?
A: 1 minute solo reflection, 2 minutes in pairs, 4 minutes in quads, then share with the whole group — broadens participation fast.

Q: What is the "15% solution" Liberating Structures prompt?
A: "What is in your sphere of influence right now that you could do without more approval or resources?" — used to surface immediate action.

Q: What is "troika consulting" in Liberating Structures?
A: Three people consult on one person's issue: the client describes the challenge, two consultants ask questions, then all three reflect on what shifted.

Q: What is the "wicked problem" framing for meetings?
A: A problem whose definition changes as the group explores it; useful for reminding facilitators to revisit the framing before jumping to solutions.

Q: What is a working agreement for a recurring meeting?
A: A short set of norms co-created by the group (start time, late policy, device rules, decision rule) that is reviewed quarterly.

Q: What is the "latecomers' tax"?
A: A team norm that anyone joining more than X minutes late gets a brief written recap instead of re-orientation, to protect on-time participants.

Q: What is a quorum?
A: The minimum number of decision-makers who must be present for decisions to be valid — defined per meeting type.

Q: What is the difference between a working meeting and a decision meeting?
A: A working meeting produces shared understanding and drafts; a decision meeting commits to a choice. Trying to do both at once usually does neither well.

Q: What is a "pre-read" in facilitation?
A: A short document sent 24–48 hours before the meeting so participants arrive informed, not blank, freeing live time for discussion.

Q: How long should a pre-read be?
A: Typically one page or 5 minutes of reading time; longer pre-reads reduce meeting prep and signal the meeting may belong in async.

Q: What is a "decision memo"?
A: A pre-read that ends with a clear recommendation, the alternatives considered, and the criteria used — so the meeting can debate, not re-research.

Q: What is a "framing question"?
A: The single question the meeting exists to answer, written at the top of the agenda and revisited at the close to check whether it was actually addressed.

Q: What is the 80/20 rule for meeting agendas?
A: 80% of value usually comes from 20% of items — usually the decision block. Identify it and protect its time.

Q: What is the difference between a meeting facilitator and a meeting owner?
A: The facilitator runs the process; the owner is accountable for the outcome. They may be the same person, but the roles should be named separately when stakes are high.

Q: What is a "process check" mid-meeting?
A: A 30-second pause where the facilitator asks, "Are we using our time well? What should we change right now?"

Q: What is a "temperature check"?
A: A quick pulse of how the group is feeling — energy, alignment, frustration — used to decide whether to continue, pivot, or end early.

Q: What is a facilitator's stance when they also have a stake in the outcome?
A: They declare their stake upfront, hand the process decision to a co-facilitator, and avoid closing summaries on topics where they have a strong view.

Q: What is co-facilitation?
A: Two people sharing facilitation duties — usually one manages process and time, the other manages content and synthesis — to reduce single-point-of-failure.

Q: What is a "designated dissenter"?
A: A participant assigned to argue against the emerging consensus to stress-test the decision before it is finalized.

Q: What is a red team / blue team decision review?
A: A structure where one subgroup attacks the proposed decision's assumptions while the other defends it, surfacing risks before commitment.

Q: What is the "five whys" technique in facilitation?
A: Asking "why" five times in sequence to move from a surface symptom to the underlying cause the meeting should actually address.

Q: What is a "How might we…" question?
A: A reframing prompt that turns a problem into an opportunity, scoped broadly enough to invite multiple solutions but narrowly enough to be actionable.

Q: What is a "sharpening" intervention?
A: A facilitator move that takes a vague comment and turns it into a concrete proposal or decision, e.g. "It sounds like you're proposing X — is that right?"

Q: What is a "broadening" intervention?
A: A facilitator move that takes a narrow proposal and surfaces alternatives, e.g. "What else could we try that achieves the same outcome?"

Q: What is "plus/delta" as a meeting closer?
A: A short debrief where participants name what to keep (plus) and what to change (delta) about the meeting itself, captured in 3 minutes.

Q: What is a "stop-start-continue" retro variant?
A: A close where each participant names one thing to stop doing, one to start, and one to continue — useful at the end of recurring meetings.

Q: What is the facilitation skill of "holding space"?
A: Staying present with a difficult moment without rushing to fix it, so the group can process tension before deciding.

Q: What is the "name it to tame it" facilitation move?
A: Labeling the emotion or tension in the room explicitly, which reduces its grip on the discussion and lets the group move forward.

Q: What is a "decision rehearsal"?
A: A brief walk-through of how a chosen option will be executed, who owns each step, and what could go wrong — used before committing.

Q: What is a "pre-mortem"?
A: A structured ask before deciding: "Imagine it's six months from now and this failed — what went wrong?" Used to surface risks early.

Q: What is a "decision audit"?
A: A quarterly review of recent decisions to see which were good, which were bad, and what the group's decision-making process missed.

Q: What is the "minimum viable meeting" principle?
A: Strip every agenda item, attendee, and minute until only those essential to the outcome remain — then add back only if justified.

Q: What is the "two-pizza rule" for meetings?
A: Jeff Bezos's heuristic that a meeting should be small enough to feed with two pizzas — roughly 6–8 people — to keep decisions sharp.

Q: Why does adding people to a meeting often slow decisions?
A: More participants raise coordination cost, dilute ownership, and increase the chance that the loudest voice dominates — especially past 6–8 attendees.

Q: What is a "decision rights matrix" for a recurring meeting?
A: A document that names which decision types the meeting owns, which it advises on, and which are out of scope — preventing scope creep.

Q: What is a "decision expiration"?
A: A date after which a decision is considered stale and must be re-confirmed or revised — useful for time-sensitive calls.

Q: What is the difference between urgency and importance in facilitation?
A: Urgent items need attention soon but may not matter long-term; important items matter long-term but are often deferred. Both must be scheduled intentionally.

Q: What is the "Eisenhower box" used for in meetings?
A: Sorting agenda items into urgent/important quadrants so the meeting spends time on what actually matters rather than what is loudest.

Q: What is a "buffer block" in a meeting agenda?
A: A 10–15 minute buffer at the end for overruns or emergent topics, so the meeting has slack without derailing core outcomes.

Q: What is the "half-life of a meeting"?
A: The time after which most attendees forget most of what was said — usually within 48 hours — which is why written notes and action items matter.

Q: What is a "decision digest"?
A: A weekly one-page summary of decisions made across meetings, used to keep the organization aligned without re-convening everyone.

Q: What is the difference between synchronous and asynchronous facilitation?
A: Synchronous facilitation guides live discussion; asynchronous facilitation shapes comments, documents, and votes over time without everyone being present at once.

Q: What is a "written facilitation" pattern?
A: A comment, document, or thread where a facilitator structures the conversation with prompts, deadlines, and explicit decision steps for async participants.

Q: What is a "decision deadline" in async facilitation?
A: A clear timestamp by which input, votes, or objections must be submitted, after which the decision owner finalizes the call.

Q: What is a "watch the clock" rule for hybrid meetings?
A: A rule that in-person and remote participants get equal speaking time, checked explicitly by the facilitator because remote voices are often missed.

Q: What is "remote-first facilitation"?
A: Designing the meeting so remote participants are first-class, with chat as a primary input channel and in-room discussion captured in the same place.

Q: What is a "chat-monitor" role in a hybrid meeting?
A: A facilitator who watches the chat, surfaces questions aloud, and ensures remote comments are integrated into the discussion.

Q: What is a "raise hand" norm and why use it?
A: A visible cue for wanting to speak — used to make turn-taking explicit, reduce interruption, and keep facilitation fair across modalities.

Q: What is a "no-meeting block"?
A: A recurring time window (often a half-day or full day) where teams protect deep work and avoid scheduling meetings over it.

Q: What is the difference between a meeting and a working session?
A: A meeting aligns, decides, and commits; a working session produces artifacts together. Calling a working session a meeting sets the wrong expectations.

Q: What is a "kickoff meeting"?
A: An early session where purpose, roles, scope, timeline, risks, and decision rights are agreed — used at the start of projects or initiatives.

Q: What is a "kickoff memo" and when is it preferred to a kickoff meeting?
A: A written document that covers the same content asynchronously, preferred when stakeholders are distributed or the project is low-complexity.

Q: What is a "post-mortem" meeting?
A: A structured review after a project or incident that captures what worked, what didn't, and what to change next time — owned by a neutral facilitator.

Q: What is a "blameless post-mortem"?
A: A review that focuses on systems and decisions rather than individuals, to surface learning without triggering defensive behavior.

Q: What is a "decision review meeting"?
A: A session held weeks after a decision to compare predicted outcomes with actual outcomes, feeding learning back into the decision process.

Q: What is a "war room"?
A: A persistent (often physical or virtual) space where a team meets repeatedly to drive a single complex outcome, with artifacts visible to all.

Q: What is a "stand-up" that has drifted into a status broadcast?
A: A daily meeting where one person talks for most of the time, others listen passively, and few blockers are named — usually a sign it should become async.

Q: What is the "silent meeting" pattern?
A: A meeting where everyone reads the agenda and writes their comments in a shared doc before any verbal discussion begins, often dramatically shortening the live portion.

Q: What is a "decision workshop"?
A: A longer facilitated session (often 2–4 hours) designed to make one or two hard decisions using structured frameworks, pre-reads, and exercises.

Q: What is a "decision workshop" output?
A: A short decision document listing the choice made, the options considered, the criteria used, the dissenters' concerns, and the review date.

Q: What is "meeting debt"?
A: The accumulated cost in time, attention, and morale of recurring low-value meetings that no one has pruned.

Q: What is a "meeting audit"?
A: A quarterly review of every recurring meeting on a team's calendar to cancel, redesign, or downsize those whose outcomes no longer justify their cost.

Q: What is the rule of thumb for meeting cost?
A: Multiply the number of attendees by their average hourly rate and by the meeting length — this is the floor of what the meeting must produce to be worth it.

Q: What is a "decision quality" check at the end of a meeting?
A: A short self-rating: "On a 1–5 scale, how confident are we this was the right call and that we have the right owner to execute it?"

Q: What is "psychological safety" in the context of meetings?
A: The shared belief that it is safe to speak up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes without fear of embarrassment or punishment.

Q: What is a facilitator's most powerful move to build psychological safety?
A: Responding to a risky comment with genuine curiosity rather than evaluation — thank the speaker, ask a clarifying question, and connect the idea to the group's work.

Q: What is "turn-taking equity" and why does it matter?
A: Distributing speaking time across participants rather than letting a few voices dominate; it improves decision quality and inclusion.

Q: What is "airtime bias" in meetings?
A: The tendency for the most confident or senior voices to receive disproportionate airtime, often at the expense of better ideas from quieter members.

Q: What is a "think-pair-share" facilitation move?
A: Each person thinks alone, discusses with a partner, then shares with the group — used to widen participation before opening the floor.

Q: What is a "popcorn" round and when is it useful?
A: A facilitation move where any participant can call the next speaker, used to break hierarchy and encourage cross-conversation.

Q: What is a "speaking stick" or "talking token" used for?
A: A physical or symbolic object that grants the floor to one person at a time, used to make turn-taking visible in heated discussions.

Q: What is the "fist of five" check after a proposal?
A: Each participant holds up 0–5 fingers; values below 3 trigger more discussion, 3–4 signal consent, 5 signals strong support — a fast consensus check.

Q: What is a "temperature read" before a decision?
A: A quick verbal scan around the room asking each person to share their current stance, used to surface hidden disagreement before a vote.

Q: What is a "vote with your feet" activity?
A: Participants physically move to corners of the room representing options, useful when reading body language matters more than words.

Q: What is "meeting-free Friday" and what does it signal?
A: A team norm protecting Fridays (or one weekday) from meetings so people can do deep work, recover, and plan.

Q: What is a "decision capsule"?
A: A short written summary of a decision containing context, choice, owner, deadline, and review date — designed to outlive the meeting.

Q: What is "decision fatigue" and how does it affect meetings?
A: Degraded judgment after many decisions in a row; mitigated in facilitation by front-loading hard decisions and protecting later slots for lighter work.

Q: What is the "anchoring bias" risk in group decisions?
A: The first number, option, or estimate disproportionately influences later judgment — mitigated by independent pre-work and structured evaluation.

Q: What is "groupthink" and how does facilitation prevent it?
A: Groupthink is a desire for harmony that suppresses dissent; prevention includes designated dissenters, anonymous input, and explicit devil's-advocate rounds.

Q: What is "confirmation bias" in meeting discussions?
A: The tendency to seek evidence that supports a preferred option and discount contrary evidence — countered by pre-mortems and red teams.

Q: What is the "availability heuristic" trap in meetings?
A: Overweighting the most recent or vivid examples when estimating risk or impact — countered by pre-read data and structured criteria.

Q: What is the "sunk cost" trap in meetings?
A: Continuing to support a decision because of past investment rather than current merit — the facilitator should name it explicitly so the group can reconsider.

Q: What is the difference between "exploring" and "deciding" speech?
A: Exploring speech opens up new angles ("what if…", "have we considered…"); deciding speech closes toward commitment ("we will…", "the owner is…"). Mixing them muddies meetings.