The Business Meeting - Five Ways to Liven Things Up

Okay, the business meetings most dreaded are the regularly scheduled ones - like those for a manager and his/her team or a project's weekly meeting, etc. You know the type and I bet you've been to more than your fair share.

As much as we'd like, we can't get completely away from having those meetings because supervisers need to provide direction and guidance to their teams and project managers need to keep all project members on task. And meetings can be an effective way to do that. Can being the key word. Having a clear cut leader, using a meeting agenda, keeping track of the time - these are all ways to help your meetings be more effective.

However, even when you follow all of the tips we've shared so far in this series, you might still find a few glazed over eyes, vacant stares and even the occasional napper at your meetings. Especially if you are the meeting leader for the regularly scheduled kind. If that's your situation, try these five tips for shaking things up and re-engaging your meeting participants.

1. Change the meeting venue: Do you always meet in the same conference room or office? People tire of staring at the same four walls. Try a completely unexpected venue, like an outdoor setting. Just the unexpectedness of it should wake your participants up and it might also arouse new ideas amongst the group.
2. Invite a guest speaker: If you are always the one doing the talking, give your participants a new voice to listen to. It doesn't have to be directly related to the meeting topic either. Maybe it's an educational piece that fulfills a career development need that your employees crave. Get creative with it.
3. Music inspires, so use it: Is your morning meeting suffering from the snooze effect? Try pumping in some rock-n-roll. This should pump things up a bit and if nothing else, it will get everyone talking about why you're playing music or how much they love/hate the song/group. Either way, you've grabbed their attention.
4. Let someone else lead for a change: Are some of your employees or project participants anxious to acquire new job skills? If so, assign responsibility for a meeting to one of them. Make them aware of effective meeting tips and let them run with it.
5. Speed Meeting: You've heard of speed dating. How about a speed meeting? Once every so often, surprise your group with a shortened version of your regularly scheduled meeting. Put all agenda items on a 2 to 3 minute timer. If the reward is getting out of the meeting sooner, you might just be surprised how cooperative the participants will be.

It can't hurt to try, so give one or more of these ideas a whirl. And let us know how it goes. Or if you have a tried-and-true method for engaging your participants, share it with us.

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