The Meeting Canoe guides your conversations

The Meeting Canoe template represents a conversation a group has during the course of a meeting, no matter the length. The conversation starts with the welcome. A good welcome helps people make the transition from the world outside the meeting to the world inside the meeting. It’s similar to the entryway in your house or apartment that helps people make the transitionfrom the outside world into your home. We spend time creating a welcoming environment because productive meetings are rooted in safety. Creating a safe-enough environment to do the meeting’s work begins with a good welcome.

Having created a welcoming environment, you next connect people to each other and the task. This is important on two levels. Personal connection builds the trust necessary to do the work, and connection to the task unleashes energy. These first two sections of the Meeting Canoe—welcome and connect people to each other and the task—build the foundation for effective work during the meeting (Lieberman 2013).

Next you discover the way things are. This is the first action step. Meeting participants come to the meeting with varying understandings of the reality they are addressing. In this step, they build a shared understanding of the reality they are facing.

When you elicit people’s dreams, you ask meeting participants to imagine their preferred future. In this step, you conceive of a future worth having. Opportunities emerge that were not present before.

These two parts of the conversation, discover the way things are and elicit people’s dreams, contain great power. That is why they represent the widest part of the Meeting Canoe. At the widest point, the most options are present. When you are clear about the way things are and you are clear about the future you want to create, you literally see things you didn’t see before (Fritz 1999).

Have you ever noticed that when you are about to purchase a new car, you see the car you would like to purchase everywhere? Those cars have always been out there. However, when you are clear about the way things are—your car no longerworks or you are tired of your current car, and you know that you want a new car—your brain lets in new information. That is why you see the car you want to purchase everywhere.

Spending time discovering the way things are and eliciting people’s dreams provides a rich menu of choices for the group. Rushing these two steps shortchanges the group. Spending too much time wears the group down. If you focus only on discovering the way things are, the group loses energy because the task seems overwhelming. If you focus only on your dreams, it is easy to become Pollyannaish. Energy builds toward completion when you are clear about the way things are and you know the future you want to create.

Having created a rich menu of possibilities, you must now decide. There are many ways to make decisions in groups. We’ll talk more about this in chapter 7. The most important point about this part of the conversation is to be clear about the decision-making method you will use. Nothing is worse in a meeting than to think you were participating in a group decision-making process and then find out that the decision was predetermined.

When the group makes a decision, it reaches a fork in the road. The act of deciding eliminates some options and opens up other options for how you will implement the decision you have reached.

The last stage of the conversation is to attend to the end. Many meetings rush or overlook this part. A good ending is a new beginning. It builds energy for future actions. Attending to the end gives people a clear understanding of the decisions reached and identifies next steps, thus serving as a springboard for the future.