How to run a fun meeting
A ‘fun meeting’ sounds like a foreign phrase, doesn’t it? The thought about attending a corporate meeting rarely brings a smile to anyone’s face or excitement of any kind. The feeling resembles more of the time at school when you had to sit still as the teacher as talking away while all the pupils were either dozing off or too hyper to stay put. When the topic was nothing of an interest to you, you simply didn’t listen.
One major issue about corporate meetings is the fact that the attendees often would prefer to do something else. Basically anything that wouldn’t require 30–60 minutes of listening or something which “could have been covered with a simple email”. How often have you heard this sentence or thought about it yourself? With our following tips you don’t ever have to hear those words again, as you will forever be the master of a fun meeting!
Start the meeting with a puzzle
The winner or the person closest to the right answer can start the meeting in any way they like. Either with a real issue they want to be addressed, with a joke or by imitating the regular meeting holder. The last point we only recommend if the you are familiar with each other: we don’t want any important partnerships to be ruined by this game!
Change is good
Following a dull presentation or listening to one person talk for ages does not promote productivity or interest towards the topic. Keep changing the format of the presentation, as well as the way people interact with each other. Use for example videos, brainstorming, Q&A, slides, mini breaks and exercises to keep people interested and focused. If you want to boost the meeting productivity even more, check our solutions for meeting productivity problems.
Snacks!!!
People love snacks! To keep the meeting attendees awake and energetic, offer healthy “brain food” for everyone to enjoy. But what’s so fun about that? Why not serve the snacks in a way that you would do for little kids. Because let’s face it: even adults turn into big babies when they are hungry. At each meeting you can also vote on what type of snacks will be served in the next one. You can also ask each attendee to bring food from their home country or hometown for everyone to try during a meeting. After each area has been covered, you can vote which one was the best.
The Woo Effect
What’s The Woo Effect? Every time something positive happens during a meeting, even the smallest thing, everyone has to yell “Wohoo!” and clap their hands. For example, if someone announces that there has been a slight drop in customer complaints, or that Beth had found an extra penny in her pocket, everyone has to celebrate. This will automatically generate more positive environment and bring smile to everyone’s faces. No matter how silly it sounds. You can try to integrate The Woo Effect to regular office environment too: every morning you can take turns to mention one positive thing that happened each day so far, followed by “Wohoo!” from everyone at the office. Not missing the bus has never been this fun!
Allow doodling (or more like reinforce it)
Everyone must have heard the benefits of doing simple, automated tasks like doodling or knitting while listening to a presentation. A student knitting at a university lecture is a common site these days. It is said that doodling and drawing can help the person to become more conscious about their surroundings and allow the triggering of new ideas and discoveries. If you want your employees to be more innovative and creative during a meeting, ask everyone to shut their mobile devices and laptops and instead, try an activity in which they don’t need to be good at but are able to do while listening. This might be the perfect time to finally buy that fidget spinner!
Finish up with yoga
Yoga is commonly known as an effective way to reduce stress. Corporate meetings can easily create a stressful environment as the attendees try to find solutions to problems and might be assigned tasks that they are not used to doing. Leaving an extra 10–15 minutes at the end of a meeting for yoga and relaxation will help the employees to rewind their minds and go back to work with a clear head. Or at least there will be a lot of laughter when Office Manager Bill will try to master the Warrior Pose. Create a space by moving the chairs around, find some yoga inspiration from YouTube and start posing! Omm…
The above tips to run a fun meeting should work with any kind of company especially if the corporate culture is flexible and innovative. However, these tips can help improve the culture and teamwork, as well as the interactions that happen between employees during meetings. Most importantly, we guarantee that the attendance percentage for meetings will skyrocket after making them more fun and enjoyable. Our team at Drum is definitely ready to put these tips into action! Which one of the above do you think would work the best for your company?
