By Mike Frick

In previous posts, we’ve described our approach to creating a strategic plan, writing a budget and managing volunteers – the three core skill areas covered by our nonprofit coaching programs in China. We believe that facilitating meetings is another essential skill for nonprofit groups, and that effective meeting facilitation requires solving conflicts in a fair, transparent and non-threatening manner.

Many of our partners in China describe their frustration attending meetings that too frequently devolve into off topic conversations, meandering discussions or sometimes even personal attacks. Given all of the time we spend in meetings, we’ve developed an approach that facilitators can use to keep meetings on track and defuse conflicts. We’ve divided these techniques into low, medium and high level “interventions” that start small and progressively build to more direct action depending on the seriousness of the situation. Starting with smaller, less-threatening interventions helps to build a sense of trust and safety for all involved; higher level interventions should only be used when other approaches have proved ineffective at solving the problem.