Closing time: The rituals that hold us together

What’s the “right” way to close a meeting? A carefully scripted roundtable? A snappy one-liner? Or maybe a drumbeat and a prayer.

Closures matter. Whether it’s the end of a meeting, a day, or a chapter, the way we wrap things up shapes how we carry them forward.

In this blog, I reflect on a recent facilitation session that didn’t go as planned (cue the forgotten laptop) but ended exactly as it needed to - and left me thinking about the quiet power of rituals, and how the way we choose to close a moment can matter just as much as how we begin it.

Forgetting the laptop, finding the lesson

I like to think of myself as a fairly seasoned facilitator. I’ve run sessions in boardrooms, gymnasiums, council chambers, and church basements. I’ve navigated late-night cranky councils, sugar-fueled workshops, and rooms where the focus was more on the snacks than the flip charts.

But nothing tests your professional cool quite like realizing, at airport security, that you’ve forgotten your laptop.

July. Kenora, Ontario. I was leaving Calgary to work with a First Nations community when security asked me to remove my laptop. Except, my laptop was sitting cheerfully at home. Cue problem-solving on the fly: enter the emergency-purchased iPad, which I quickly learned is almost like a laptop, if you squint and lower your expectations.

By the second morning, I was irritated. No printing. No hotel support. Wrestling with documents in the cloud. Basically in full logistical meltdown mode.

Just when I was ready to declare defeat, the community brought me back to centre. The session began not with “action items” or PowerPoints but with ritual. Drumming to open, smudging, water and berry ceremonies, prayer - gestures that create a rhythm of togetherness, inviting stillness instead of stress.

So there I was, tangled in the noise of my facilitator brain, clutching a brand-new iPad and hard-won printed documents, feeling the edges of my stress begin to quiet.

The power of ritual

Facilitators are notorious for sweating the small stuff - timing, process, and yes, the “perfect” way to wrap things up.

• Sometimes it’s a go-around for final thoughts (which, let’s be honest, can chew up 35 minutes of your life you’ll never get back).
  
  
• Sometimes we ask, “What could we have done better?” which once elicited, “Your pants were too loud.” (They were bright red. The group laughed, and we ended it there. Surprisingly effective.)
  
  
• And sometimes people are yawning, fidgeting, clearly done, and you just need to finish.

But here - standing shoulder to shoulder, closing the day with prayer and drumming - it was different. It wasn’t my ritual, but it was beautiful. There was calmness, closure, and togetherness. A collective exhale.

And it got me thinking…

Are rituals the quiet glue?

When I was a kid, rituals were everywhere. We stood for O Canada and the Lord’s Prayer at school. Over time, those faded. These days I find myself taking my dad to church. I don’t love it (too much less-than-half-hearted singing for my taste), but I love him - and in listening to the prayers, I can’t help but notice the way they open hearts and minds, creating just enough space for reflection.

We don’t talk about it much, but rituals are society’s quiet glue. They give us pause. They gather us up. They remind us we’re more than our to-do lists; more than our frantic tech failures.

Closing without a script

Theory says a good facilitator provides closure to a session so people feel complete. In practice, closure is a spectrum: sometimes it’s laughter, sometimes relief, sometimes gratitude. The right closing isn’t always the one you’ve planned.

That session in Kenora? Despite all my stress, I walked away with deep appreciation. The prayer and drumming were the most fitting close I could have imagined.

So now I’m curious - fellow facilitators, professionals, meeting-wranglers of all kinds: How do you like to close things out? Do you have a go-to ritual that reliably works? A funny story that surprised you? Or maybe an unexpected moment you’ve carried forward into your practice?

Drop us a comment or shoot us a note - we’d love to hear your rituals. Because when we share our stories, we all get better at writing the endings that matter.