The criticality of a meeting environment and meeting tone, as supporting factors toward the sucessful achievement of the sessions goals, really came home to roost for me today.

I have been facilitating a series of working sessions with a team of six over the last three months.  The goal is process development / improvement.

Everyone is Important

When working with a group of subject matter experts of diverse background, it has been my experience best results are derived when everyone actively participates.

Not to put too large a point on it, but for me actively equates to passionately, avidly being in the moment from the sessions beginning to it’s end.

Atmosphere

Today’s session was in a different location.  The normal meeting room was not available.   The smaller more intimate room changed the entire meeting.

The sessions to date while effective and definitely resulting in good progress were quite different.  The mood at today’s session was lighter and full participation by everyone occured throughout.

It was such a noticeable difference I have changed the location for future meetings.  I am aware of the importance of a meetings set-up and location but today’s session really opened my eyes as to how powerfull the proper circumstances can impact  results.

In today’s case it was clearly a positive impact, I am sure though it could just as easily had negative effects.  In fact this probably was true of the previous location we used.

I guess, just like they say when you are buying a new home, location is everything.