Independent facilitator?

To what extent do you need an independent moderator for a successful participation meeting? That’s the question that Arend de Geus, an experienced specialist in facilitating such sessions, wanted to explore with a group of 25 environmental managers — during a workshop at the National Environmental Management Day 2025. For that purpose, QandR was the perfect tool.

In participation meetings — where the environmental manager must act as a bridge between the “system world” and the “living world,” and emotions can run high — it can be very helpful to have someone lead the meeting independently.
During the session, the environmental managers used various QandR formats to share their views on this topic. The strength of QandR lies in how the group can quickly and directly create a visual overview of what’s on everyone’s mind, serving as a great starting point for further discussion. In this way, all aspects were covered.
Scroll through the screenshots below for an impression of the session.

So, is an independent moderator really necessary? The added value certainly became clear — although any seasoned environmental manager will naturally feel they can handle it just as well themselves!

With QandR, every moderator at least has a tool at hand to facilitate meetings effectively. As long as the independent moderator doesn’t become too dependent on QandR!

With multiple-choice questions and word clouds, I was able to quickly gather the group’s experiences and ideas. Since sticky notes can now be made smaller, I had them fill in a diagram I had prepared. To wrap things up, I asked the participants, via a slider, to indicate how confident they felt about leading a meeting themselves. It was only afterwards that I realized how many different interactive formats I had used!

Arend de Geus – Participation Specialist