Meetings are an essential part of running a successful team, allowing everyone to share ideas and updates so that projects are completed effectively. While they’re important, not everyone enjoys meetings, especially if they’re dull and uninteresting – which most of them tend to be!
If you’re a manager or business owner, you might dread scheduling meetings, knowing that your staff are likely to be disinterested and unengaged. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Here we’ll be sharing some ways to make your meetings more exciting.
But first – when hosting a meeting, you should make sure it’s a suitable room for the kind of activities you want to try out. Check out these meeting rooms for hire Melbourne, or a similar service in your city.
#1 – Use Icebreakers
Before the meeting begins, you can start things off with a quick and simple activity that everyone can get involved in. Icebreakers are meant to be quick and can be completed in the first few minutes of the meeting, starting it off in a fun way and not taking up too much time.
A good suggestion for an icebreaker activity is simply asking a different question at the start of each meeting. This not only gets everyone involved in the discussion, but it also lets you find out more about your team. You can ask about favourite foods, hobbies, weekend plans or holidays.
Alternatively, you can also create icebreaker activities. These are a little more involved and take a bit more time, but they can normally still be completed quickly. For example, you can ask everyone to come up with two truths and a lie about themselves. Another suggestion is to find ten things that everyone in the group has in common. Make it unrelated to work for a greater challenge.
#2 – Setting Goals and Celebrating Milestones
It’s important to set goals for your team, as this gives everyone something to work towards and helps increase motivation and productivity. Setting goals helps to define the vision and purpose of each project, and a meeting is a perfect place to outline them and ensure everyone is on the same page.
When creating goals, you should make sure they’re SMART. This means that they’re specific, measurable, relevant and time-bound. This helps to ensure that all of the goals you set for your team are realistic and actionable and makes measuring and celebrating success much easier. You can take employee input when setting goals if you want to increase engagement further.
Celebrating milestones is important too, and your regular meetings are a great time to do it. Here you can celebrate with your team when you reach targets and achieve goals, as well as celebrate more personal milestones. Recognising and rewarding loyalty and achievements is a great way to inspire your team.
#3 – Hear Different Perspectives
If the same person leads the meeting every day, your team is only ever going to hear things from one perspective. In addition, it can be less engaging for your staff to be listening to you, rather than giving them the chance to give their own thoughts and opinions. Allowing your team to take turns holding meetings is a great solution to this problem.
Getting the perspectives of your team can help you avoid biases, assumptions and errors that might otherwise limit your understanding of an issue. In addition, it can help you build trust, loyalty and respect with your team, who will feel like their opinion is valued while also becoming more engaged in the conversation.
It also gives you a bit of a break from handling meetings, which can be a challenge in itself. By taking the time to listen to your team rather than instructing them, you get to potentially benefit from new ideas and thoughts while also making meetings more interesting for everyone involved.
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