Have you ever been in a meeting, in a room that’s a few degrees too warm, and suddenly your eyes start to feel heavy…? Your mind starts drifting as you wonder what you’re going to have for tea tonight, the speaker’s words start to sound fuzzy and before you know it, you’re completely zoned out.
It happens to the best of us once in a while, especially during those long meetings where you don’t have much to say, and you try your hardest to sit upright in your seat and keep engaged with the subject at hand.
So how do you combat this? What’s the best way to keep meetings a place of vibrant and thought-provoking conversation, rather than long lectures that leave people feeling sluggish… Keep reading to find out!
Switch it up
Once a month, we have a meeting with our senior team members to discuss not only the business as a whole, but also to discuss how we can become a better and more effective management team.
However, we started to find that every month we would tend to spend at least half of the meeting, if not all the meeting, focussing on the past month’s activities rather than looking forward and it was getting very “samey”, if not boring.
If we had performed well, the meeting would end up being an unproductive praising session, if we had performed poorly, it would turn into a lecture.
Therefore, we quite deliberately decided how we could do something to change the meetings up. This helps to stimulate the team as well as promote new learning and communication methods effectively, as well as make the meetings more enjoyable for everyone!
I’m not saying we should ignore the past. We should actively seek to learn from it and work out how we use it to drive forward and create a better future. But, I just think there are more innovative ways to move forward that focus less on talking about what has already occurred within the business.
How to move forward – the £ distribution method
The £/pound distribution method, which I borrowed from Charlotte Murray, is an effective way of deciding which tasks you should prioritise.
Each person is given a figurative £1, and everyone has to donate a portion of their £1 to an idea. So, one person can give 50p to two ideas, or 80p to one idea and 20p to another.
(It’s best to set a minimum limit so that people don’t start donating 3p to every idea available).
You can even donate your entire £1 to just one idea if you wanted to.
Once everyone in the group has portioned out their £1 to the ideas submitted there is usually a clear winner with the highest monetary value assigned to it.
The benefits of the £ distribution method are:
- It’s a more interactive way for the group to make decisions
- Helps to avoid initiative overload
- Provides a clear path for upcoming projects
- Helps you understand what’s important to your colleagues
So, if you currently find your meetings to be lacking the enthusiasm you wish they had, try some of these techniques to re-engage your crowd!
