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but the accounting, packaging and design folks won't. If participants in the group fall into tech-speak or industry jargon, restate their comments so everyone understands. For example, "Taking it from a yield to a disengagement is conflicting", might be restated as "the user has to clearly choose yield or disengagement, but can't go from one to the other". If the facilitator isn't sure how to restate, then the speaker should be asked to do so.

DURING THE MEETING
The Facilitator has must guide the group consistently toward the goal, while assuring that everyone is participating:

Clarify the Goal
Assure everyone has the agenda and understands the goal of the meeting. Get agreement or feedback, and take the time to clarify the goal if necessary.

Reiterate the Time Frame
Make sure that no one expects to be done early or thinks that a second meeting might be held to accomplish today's goal.

Perform Introductions
Set the tone for how communications will occur. Respond with first names if that's how you want to proceed. For example, "Welcome Bill, it's nice to have you here from the Products Department.", or "Nice to have you with us today Mr. Jamison." And, remember to use names during the meeting. For example, "Jeff, do you have anything to add to that?", rather than "Does anyone want to add anything?"

Describe the Meeting Parameters
Explain the sequence of events so participants don't jump ahead or introduce items not to be considered. For example, "I'll be reviewing the six steps of the project, and then we'll go into some detail to get your ideas on steps 3 and 4, but we won't talk about costing at this meeting".

Make Everyone Important
An excellent way to help participants feel at ease is to make it clear to everyone that ALL ideas are welcome and will be accepted. Explain that you don't want to hear any negative comments such as "we tried that", or "that process is too slow", etc., during idea time. Then, ask for ideas on your topic. One way to support this is to have a visual "idea" list created on the board as people talk, regardless of how far out the idea might be. After a few minutes stop the idea time and begin discussion. For example, "Okay folks, it looks like we've got 8 or 10 ideas about the packaging, so we're going to stop here and look at each idea in some detail."

Affirm and Confirm
The facilitator needs to be constantly aware that the participants need to get feedback. "That's good", "OK", or "I see" usually aren't sufficient to encourage people to participate

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