5 Ways to improve your meetings
What's the most boring hour you spend at work every week? There are so many possibilities that it's difficult to pick just one--but chances are that a meeting makes the list.
The problem begins with the fact that every staff meeting is the same as the one last week (and the one the week before that). Usually these meetings have nothing on the agenda but status reporting.
But here's a simple way to transform staff meetings from dull to dynamic: break the script.
f you run staff meetings, build agendas that break the pattern of status-status-status. If you simply participate, use a different technique when it's your turn to share. Either way, here are 5 quick suggestions:
1. Ask a question instead of presenting information. Brainstorm to solve a problem.
2. Take the meeting out of the meeting room. Give team members an assignment - find new ideas/products that we can apply to what we do - and take a field trip to a coffee shop, a mall a gym or a supermarket.
3. Set time limits for presenting. Instead of 10 minutes, ask a team member to give a one-minute update on his/her topic.
4. Make a poster. Gather old magazines, poster paper, glue sticks and markers. Break out team members into groups of two or three, and ask them to make a poster on a key topic--our objectives, a priority or an initiative.
5. Hold a trade show. Members of my team wanted to showcase some content they had created for a client. So they created "booths" staffed by team members who had worked on the project. Other staff members walked around to the booths, heard a quick description of what happened and saw a demonstration.
You don't have to complete ban presentations. But you do need to constantly refresh the experience so that it's memorable and meaningful.
Information taken from inc.com.