Good meetings start with good design.
I offer on-line meeting design sessions that help you:
– Get clear on the desired outcomes for your meeting
– Design the opening of the meeting to get everyone on the same page and connected.
– Map out a flow of topics and clarify the questions you want the group to discuss in each.
– Weave in a variety of participatory approaches so you engage the best thinking of the group. I’ll share from a big tool box of methods to enhance interaction and participation.
How It Works
I listen to your unique context and ask questions to help you get clear on what will be most helpful. These Zoom design sessions are typically 60 minutes. We’ll work on a draft agenda together and I’ll share a follow up email with links to ideas and methods to incorporate.
In one hour of this co-creative conversation, you can develop a well-organized flow for your meeting that will set you up to achieve the desired outcomes while growing trust and good will among the group. I can also troubleshoot challenging group process situations.
Please click here if you could like to book a session. For more complex meetings, we can book a series of sessions.
This work is offered with a Pay from the Heart ethic. The suggested fee per hour of design coaching is $150.
You can pay on this Contribute page. If you find the value of the session is higher than the suggested fee, you can pay what you feel is appropriate. If cost is a barrier, please pay what you can.
My work focuses on helping state and local governments advance climate action. This means I am frequently helping them to navigate complex decisions and to engage diverse stakeholders. We use a wide variety of methods and a lot of meetings to get alignment on proposals, policies and programs.
I partner with Beth whenever I can. Better than traditional conveners I have worked with, I can count on Beth for exceptional, thoughtfully-designed meetings and collaborative events of many types. She brings a wide and deep suite of effective tools to make our meetings more fruitful and fun, and to improve the quality of our outcomes.
In my experience, working with Beth generates good policy solutions, advances advocacy, focus and alignment – and improves the quality of the collaboration by building the trust and good will among the stakeholders supporting them to work well together for the long haul. For example, when Beth teamed up with us to design an extensive series of regional meetings, she encouraged work with the stakeholders in ways that created relationships and more engagement between the state agency staff and a wide variety of organizations and individuals. And Beth has a deep and sensitive understanding of how to approach issues of diversity and justice within the process.
Even today, 10 years later, I see the lasting results of her process in the connections between people, especially underserved people, who weren’t used to working together with state officials and municipal leaders and now, still do. Today, they have each other’s phone numbers because they worked together at the tables on meaningful things.
Beth always boosts the clarity of our meetings and helps us refine and sharpen the outcomes we seek to achieve. Her meeting agendas always build in time for the group to focus, to think, and to work together in ways that leave us feeling energized and productive. I’ve seen how well it works when the meeting outcomes draw on the wisdom of participants to generate insights and actions beyond what any single member could achieve on his or her own.
Beth asks great questions. I didn’t fully appreciate the value of asking the right open-ended questions before I started working with Beth, but her thoughtfulness and use of good questions opens up a refreshing space for discussion.
Finally, I sincerely appreciate how generous Beth is. She shares her tools and resources, leaving all participants with libraries of reference materials and new ideas on ways of working together.