Publication number: ELQ-89563-1
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How to liven up a team meeting
In this Best Practice you will find 5 ideas on how to liven up your team meetings at work.
Introduction
Team meetings are an essential way to bounce ideas off each other🗣. Sadly, in most cases, they’re anything but productive. They drag, make people waste time and achieve very little⏰📉.
As a result, most people either escape them or prefer to show up and check their emails and nap, without really engaging✉️🙇🏼♂️.
A study conducted by OpinionWay in April 2017 concluded that only 52% of meetings are productive👀.
That’s why meetings are, without a doubt, an essential way to communicate at work🗣.
We can distinguish three different types of meetings👇🏻:
• Information Sharing meetings: essential to keep up to date with the progress of a project/individual tasks and to get information across to the whole team.
• Innovation meetings: important to get to know people’s ideas on a given topic, mind map ideas and boost creativity.
• Decision making meetings: crucial to get your team together and find a quick solution to a problem or approve a common decision.
As project manager, it is your responsibility to organise meetings with your team👨🏻💼. Discover some rules to productive meetings and our 5 tips to ensure that your co-workers enjoy them✅!
The golden rules to a productive meeting🔑
There’s no real secret, a meeting has to be well prepared for it to be effective✍🏼📝. Follow these rules to organise an exciting meeting and get all participants 100% engaged💡:
• Define and communicate the agenda;🗣
• Choose carefully the participants;👤
• Start on time (never mind who’s late);⏰
• Announce the aim of the meeting and stick to it;🚩
• Liven up the atmosphere with your enthusiasm😄;
• Stick to the time constraints🕑;
• Do a recap of the most important decisions💬;
• Finish on time⌚️;
• Follow up with a summary email📩.
5 ideas to liven up your meetings✅
- Step n°1 |
Everyone needs to be standing up👬
According to Richard Branson, the owner of Virgin, more and more companies favour stand-up meetings. Firstly, you ensure that all the participants are 100% focused on the subject (rather than sitting on their phones). Secondly, these meetings are usually shorter and straight to the point. On a blog article, Richard Branson stated “it’s a much more efficient way to get to the point, take a decision and finish”🗣.
- Step n°2 |
What about going for a walk?🚶♂
Have you ever heard of “co-walking”, “walk & talk” or even of a “walking meeting”?🧐 This practice is supposed to be extremely efficient💪🏽. It was first invented in the US and implemented by Steve Jobs👤. Today, big American corporations such as Facebook, Virgin or LinkedIn use it regularly.
