#16: 3 wayfinding questions to keep meeting direction on track

I am going to tell you 3 wayfinding questions to make sure your meeting participants stay on the meeting path you designed.

People get off track as the meeting is happening

I see people get disoriented in meetings all the time. They are hesitant to speak up. Loud voices can derail the direction. Consequently, time is wasted, participants lose alignment on the issue at hand and engagement dwindles as people resort to multi-tasking.

This was glaringly evident in a meeting last week with hired “facilitators” from a top 5 global consultancy firm. Instead of skillfully guiding participants through the meeting's objectives, they merely projected their screens and took notes.

I had multiple people message me saying: “Well that was a waste of time” and “What were we even trying to do?”

3 questions to keep the meeting on the right path

Fortunately, as kickass facilitators we know how to guide teams toward a common outcome.

There are 3 wayfinding questions I ask myself to help vocalize a simple statement to make sure my meeting direction isn’t at risk.

1. Where have we been?
2. Where are we going?
3. Where are we now?

wayfinding questions

The 3 Wayfinding Questions

1. Where have we been?

This can take two forms:

1. a decision that was made in a prior meeting
2. the synthesis of what was just done in the last X minutes in the meeting

2. Where are we going?

This can be both the broader outcome after you leave the room, giving a sneak peak of an upcoming activity or what you hope to walk away with at the end of a meeting.

3. Where are we now?

This is re-grounding the group on what is happening at the moment whether they are going to do an activity, open a document or start a discussion.

Examples from the past week

Here are two recent examples from working sessions that I facilitated.

Example 1: Brainstorming session, about 74 minutes into the workshop

“OK team, welcome back. We are about to get back into brainstorming (where we are now) but first , I wanted to remind everyone that the big user need we are solving for is Growth and Connection. (where we have been). We are going to be voting on our top ideas in about 20 minutes. (where we are going)

Let’s jump back into brainstorming!” (where we are now)

Example 2: Framing the start of a meeting after a tense previous working session

“Good morning everyone! As you recall, last week, we made the decision to focus on early stage prioritization of ideas to reduce downstream duplication of work. (where we have been) In the next 2 hours, we will have walked through 3 concrete examples to see if our new process works. (where we are going). To get ready for that, I want everyone to open up the Prioritization document in the chat window and comment on your top products (where we are now).”

Give it a try

Framing your wayfinding statement using the 3 questions grounds the group on the meeting direction and gives the group confidence on the direction you are taking them.

Ready to give it a try this week?