Glossary of Meeting Terms: C

The CAPPED Decision Framework is a set of stages and facilitative questions to help groups make decisions together, no matter what the scale, urgency, and complexity. Developed by Ben Crothers, this framework uses logic and progressive alignment to structure a discussion and reach a decision and alignment stage by stage, rather than trying to align on a decision right at the end.

The chair (also chairperson, chairwoman or chairman) is the highest elected officer of an organized group such as a board, a committee, or a deliberative assembly. In formal meetings, the chair is responsible for driving the meeting content. The chair leads preparation of the meeting agenda, opens the meeting, and works to keep the conversation focused, engaging, and balanced. The chair is also responsible for managing the formal business of the meeting, such as recognizing speakers and...

Challenging Assumptions is a sense-making technique designed to break apart a statement and discover where assumptions may be limiting your options. There are several ways of leading a group through an exercise designed to challenge assumptions.

In one approach, groups start by writing out the stated goal or problem, then underlining every word that implies an underlying assumption. For example:
We need to lay off 20 people this quarter.

Then, for every underlined word or...

A check-in is a technique used at the beginning of a meeting to give everyone an opportunity to speak, and during meeting transitions to survey the group's current status. The simplest check-in is simply to ask each person how they are. There are many more specific check-in techniques, each developed for a specific meeting context.

All check-ins work to:

Circles and Soup is an exercise teams use to the identify the parts of their work they can control directly, the factors they can influence, and those which are outside of their control. Once these factors are sorted, the team can then make better decisions about how to prioritize their efforts.

The technique, introduced by Diana Larsen and frequently used in action review meetings, works by drawing three large concentric circles on a whiteboard. The team then writes down the various...

A Clarifying Question is a question asked about something that is unclear or hard to understand. People ask clarifying questions to avoid any confusion or misunderstanding, rather than as a way to probe, challenge, or open up new avenues of discussion.

Example clarifying questions include:

Cognitive Biases are mental shortcuts we each make to help us make decisions in the face of ambiguity, overwhelming options, and limited time. Researchers believe cognitive biases have evolved so we can make mostly-correct decisions quickly, allowing us to survive, grow, and adapt to the most common challenges everyone encounters. These biases, though, often lead people in the complex modern world to jump to incorrect conclusions. Effective meeting designs will work to combat cognitive...

A committee consists of a named subgroup of people within an organization who come together to fill a predetermined function. A committee's work is described in its charter and is often conducted in a series of meetings. A committee may operate as a governing body, overseeing an organizational function for a prolonged period of time, or as a project team that gets disbanded once the original goal is accomplished. Depending on their function, committee meetings may work like team meetings,...

A Community of Practice Meeting is used by people with a shared interest in a topic for networking, learning, and mutual support.

You can find an introduction to Team Cadence Meetings in Chapter 32 of our book, Where the Action Is. You may also want to visit the Learn More link, below, for resources to help you plan, run, and troubleshoot the specific meetings your team needs.

Teams may use a compromise approach to making a decision when they can't agree on a single answer. The facilitator helps the team identify all points that they agree on to form the basis of the decision. Then, focusing only on the specific areas of disagreement, the team seeks an alternate approach, or compromise, that everyone can live with.

A conference call is an audio call in which multiple participants all join the same call at the same time. Most commonly, people join conference calls by dialing a shared conference number on their phones. In recent years, the term conference call has also been used to describe group calls held by computer using software like Skype, UberConference, and other computer-based audio technologies. A conference call that includes real-time video of participants is called a video conference, and...

Connectivity describes the ability of individuals to connect to the Internet using computers and mobile devices. Connectivity problems are more noticeable and have a greater negative impact on online meetings than on most other forms of Internet use. Connectivity issues are especially noticeable when using computer audio or video conferencing.

A consent agenda is a technique for addressing multiple topics in a single agenda item, such as committee reports, meeting minutes, and other items that don't require discussion. Boards and committees use a consent agenda to quickly manage all the items they are legally required to address during the meeting, but which should not take up any of the board's precious meeting time. Groups that use a consent agenda expect participants to have reviewed the items on the consent agenda prior to the...

A consulting decision-making meeting involves a group that provides information and advice to one or more designated decision makers. The appointed decision maker(s) then take responsibility for making the final decision. There are several ways to run a meeting that consults to the decision maker. In some cases, the group will meet to discuss the decision separately and then provide a written report to the decision maker. In other cases, the group discusses the decision in the decision maker...

A criteria matrix is a valuable decision-making tool that is used to assess and rank a list of options based on specific criteria. For example, the simplest criteria matrix will compare the Pros and Cons of each option.

More involved decisions benefit from establishing criteria or factors for evaluating each option in advance, such as cost, time to implement, expected impact, alignment with core values, etc. Each alternative is then rated on each criterion and compared to the others...