Stef Fleet · Practitioner toolkit
Lean Coffee: a facilitation guide
A structured, agenda-less meeting where the group sets and ranks its own topics. Good for team check-ins, peer groups and retrospectives. 45–75 minutes, 4–12 people.
01 · 5–8 MIN
Brainstorm
Everyone writes topics, one per sticky note, and reads them out in a sentence.
02 · 5 MIN
Prioritise
Cluster duplicates. Each person gets 2–3 dot votes. Rank by votes.
03 · REST OF TIME
Discuss
Top topic first, 8-minute timebox. Thumbs up to extend 4 min, down to move on.
The board
Turning talk into action
As each topic closes, sort what came out of it into one of three lanes:
- Advice → hold or commit. Useful ideas people choose to keep or try.
- Open item → discuss. Not resolved; goes back into the next session's backlog.
- Action item → take action. Named owner and date before you move on.
A full session plan
- Open (10 min): check the agenda, share progress since last time, agree the aim of the session.
- Lean Coffee (30–50 min): brainstorm, prioritise, discuss.
- Close (10 min): review actions, plan the next session, and a one-word or picture-card check-out.
Facilitator tips
- Hold the timebox firmly; the vote to continue belongs to the group, not you.
- Interrupt "solution mode" early: ask what the group needs before fixing it.
- Surface what the room already knows first; add expert input on top.
Stef Fleet · Team & leadership coach, Copenhagensf@steffleet.com · linkedin.com/in/stephanfleet