Last week I facilitated two group meetings, one for some Chamber members and one for a political group. Each group had a similar goal of defining areas where people want to direct their energies to facilitate future accomplishments.
In each meeting, I followed my standard facilitation procedures: I encouraged participants to share ideas while I listed their suggestions on poster sheets. Within each group, ideas flowed. I made a laundry-list as each suggestion was offered.
After everyone had an opportunity share ideas, I invited people to come up and prioritize the listed responses by selecting the five items they felt were most important (those who have been to a planning meeting I have facilitated know I love press-on stars for this purpose).
In each of the two groups a clear consensus was apparent. When I prepared my reports on these discussions, I was able to provide a reliable summary of what was important to the participants of each discussion, which was also a good indication of where people are most likely to be motivated to be involved; they also had a sense of participation in, and ownership of, the next moves forward.
Some individuals are blessed with great creativity, but in my experience, a group discussion where each person is encouraged to participate, but no one is allowed to dominate, leads to many creative ideas and potential solutions.