No More Meetings From Hell: How To Structure And Manage The Facilitation Of Teams

By Jack Rahaim

Book Overview

This breakthrough guide was written by a recognized leader in the field of facilitation; it provides a no-holds-barred look at organizational change and ways to structure and deliver facilitation... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1438202628
• ISBN13: 9781438202624
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 130 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Learning the hard way

The author takes a very direct, unvarnished approach to addressing the issues that derail so many team meetings. I am not a facilitator by trade, but have led large teams, and been part of many meetings led by outside facilitators. I have first hand experience and know the difference between a productive meeting that leads to sustainable results, and disasterous meetings that produce make-work exercises that leave all participants feeling undervalued. The big take aways for me in this book surrounded the discussion regarding who the client really is, and how to engage participants. As a side bar, chapter 4 is alone worth the price of the book. The examples that Rahaim sites are excellent. His experience is rich and diverse. This is a good read for anyone interested in leading productive meetings. I wish I had this book 15 years ago!

Meetings Really Are Our Friends......

I have been leading meetings for a number of years. Jack's insights into creating great,productive meetings are spot on. He takes the fundamentals, breaks them down into steps, and creates a path to success which brings proven results.

Do you hate endless meetings?

I hate wasting time in meetings, and I hate leading meetings that go nowhere. Before reading Rahaim's book, I figured that facilitating efficient meetings was just a gift that some people had and some people didn't, or that it had to do with something like charisma or confidence. But Rahaim shows how anybody can become a good facilitator by using their individual strengths to their best advantage. He balances sound principles of organizational behavior with instructive anecdotes from his own consulting practice. His step-by-step guides to gearing a meeting towards the needs of the participants (p. 24) and logistical preparation (p. 64) are particularly valuable. Those alone have saved me hours of preparation time in the last month! I did have some minor quibbles with formatting style (the footnotes are arranged strangely in the text, and the editor has used British-style single quotes throughout.) But these do not detract from the readability of the book. All in all, Rahaim's book manages to be both precise and readable, both theoretically nuanced and immediately practical.

A great help!

As someone who is called upon to facilitate client groups, I've been looking for a text which deals with more than surface training issues. This book delves into groups, how to work with where they are and how to guide them through a process to success. The section on identifying the 'real client' and crafting a methodology are worth the price by themselves. I have often wondered how the 'pros' approach this work. The author does an excellent job of letting us into his head as he plans a couple of client efforts. I highly recommend this book to anyone who facilitates or is considering facilitation either as part of their job or as a full time career.

Terrific Insight Into The Process

I own a number of books on facilitation but 'No More Meetings From Hell' provides a perspective that I have not seen anywhere else. It brings the reader inside the process of creating a relationship with clients and structuring the facilitation of groups to optimize the chance for success. The detailed discussion of how to create or choose a methodology, accompanied by the examples from the author's practice, provides powerful insights into the process that skilled facilitators use. Unlike other books, the author doesn't try to reduce facilitation to checklists or a series of exercises; instead, he brings us along with him as explains the rationale for his methodology. I actually took the time to visit the author's website, [...], and found a number of client testimonials from real clients who felt strongly enough about his work to allow their names to be used...now that I've read the book, I see why they felt so strongly.