Flipping the Script on Town Hall Meetings

Joel Levin
12 hours ago
3 min read

The scene is familiar. Thirty to fifty community members have been invited to hear an update on a project. The project officer stands up and delivers a fifteen-minute presentation — its background, how wonderful it is, how wonderful it will be, and how the team has the community’s concerns well in hand.

The community sits patiently, anxieties bubbling, trying to absorb twelve months of project context in one sitting. (If you’ve read our piece on cognitive load, you’ll recognise this pattern.) The tension rises. Questions come from every direction — some strategic, some highly detailed, some off-topic entirely. It becomes harder to build a clear thread, and the same ground gets covered two or three times.

Sound familiar? What if we flipped the script?

Welcome to the question wall

The question wall is a facilitation approach that captures all community questions before anyone presents anything. It gives participants a chance to articulate their concerns and priorities. It gives the project team a chance to hear what the room actually needs, and to determine the order in which to respond so the answers build logically on each other.

Practically speaking, you still do the welcome and session overview. But then you ask the room: what do you want us to respond to today?

Some facilitators use technology for this. Personally, I love using a sticky wall. There is something reassuring — for everyone in the room — about seeing questions captured visibly and then seeing answers written up underneath them, one by one.

A sticky wall is a large length of ripstop nylon, lightweight, durable and portable. Once sprayed with repositionable adhesive, paper of any size can be placed and moved anywhere on the surface - helping groups see and organise collective thinking in real time. We use one specific colour of paper to capture the questions. As the project team works through their content, answers get written directly underneath.

Imagine what happens to the collective anxiety in the room when people can watch their questions being methodically answered. Off-topic questions can be set aside for later. Questions without an immediate answer can be acknowledged and followed up. Nothing gets lost.

The approach also allows the facilitator to interview the project team, ask clarifying questions, draw the links between different topics, and confirm for participants when a question has been fully addressed. People with different cognitive speeds arrive at the same point in their own time, rather than being left behind or frustrated.

More than a technique

The question wall can be an entire session format in its own right. It can be written up and presented back to the broader community as a record of what was asked and what was answered.

It is not a panacea. It does not suit every context or group size. But as a way of flipping the default dynamic of a town hall - ensuring that listening comes before telling - it is one of the most consistently effective approaches I have used across many different scenarios and sectors.

Starting with questions makes a statement. It tells people that their concerns are the priority, not the presentation. And it helps everyone in the room join the dots they need joined.