When facilitating, I create more engaging meetings by using the musical concept of rhythms. Rhythms are the patterns that make music feel smooth, surprising, energizing, or calming. Every room and group has a rhythm, for example in a library people speak quietly and they also move more slowly. Like musicians, facilitators can use rhythms to catch participants' attention, transition to a new content area, or make a session more engaging.

A group’s rhythms are most visible in the pace of people’s actions. Many board meetings have monotonous rhythms: people speak in turn, everyone is seated, and people’s actions feel predicable. In nursery schools, you find a complicated polyrhythm as children may be singing, crying, and eating all at the same time. Every group has a natural rhythm, and you can assist a group by following or disrupting the natural rhythm.

When people are nervous at the beginning of a workshop, they may have a staccato rhythm which is noticeable in their short speech and quick glances. I try and introduce a legato or smooth rhythm to calm them down.

Recently I taught a slow repetitive song at the beginning of a workshop to shift people’s nervousness energy. As they sang, people breathed deeper, gave each other more eye contact, and let go of their clasped hands. People shed one layer of nervousness, and afterward they were more willing to dive into the workshop content.

When you shift the rhythm, it can feel like magic to a group. But it’s not magic, it’s tending to people’s bodily experience of being a workshop. Energizers are useful, but they only speed up the rhythm. Good music can have many different rhythms, so take a cue from your favorite songs and change the rhythm.