I have attended hundreds and hundreds of meetings in my career. I think meetings should be as fun and enjoyable as any part of our work. As an entrepreneur if you want to have fun meetings, you have to take conscious steps to make that happen. Watch my video and discover my steps for doing just that.
Summary for Making Meetings Fun
- Have fewer meetings.
- Have shorter meetings.
- Define a clear purpose for every meeting.
- Make sure the right people and the right number of people are in every meeting.
- Start every meeting with some wins.
- Meetings are for debate and discussion.
- Have an agenda and make sure one person is in charge of following it.
- Close every meeting by going around the room for a one-word or one-phrase close from every person.
- As an entrepreneur, listen for the laughter in meetings.
Want help making your meetings fun? Call me at +1 (604) 721-5732 or Contact Me.
Audio
Transcript
How do you make meetings fun?
Hi Everyone. I’m Coach David J. Greer.
Today I want to talk to you about making meetings at your company a lot more fun. I can think of a time not that long ago when I was in so many back-to-back meetings that literally I had to run down the hallway in order to get from one meeting to another. I want you to know that wasn’t fun.
As an entrepreneur, how do you make meetings for your organization more fun? First of all, have fewer of them. Some meetings you do have to have and not every one can be as fun as others, but have a lot fewer. If you have a hundred employees and you find a way to have one less one-hour meeting per person per week, that’s the equivalent of three full-time equivalents. In a lot of companies that I’ve worked with, it’s not that hard to find a way to eliminate one hour of meetings per person a week.
Have shorter meetings. No one said that meetings have to be 30 minutes or 60 minutes long. I actually book my calendar on 15-minute increments. Yes, you can get a lot done in 15 minutes. If you finish early no one says that you have to stay around for the whole time. Finish early and get out of the room or end the call, whatever it is.
For every meeting do you make sure that there is a clear purpose. Why is the meeting being held? Does everyone know what the outcome of the meeting is? What is it that you are trying to achieve? There is an amazing number of meetings where there is total lack of clarity about the purpose of the meeting.
Are the right people in the room who need to be there whatever the purpose is? Is it the right number of people? Are a whole bunch of people showing up because they are afraid of missing out? You need to find that out and to find a way to keep those people informed of the outcome of the meeting, but they don’t need to be there to be part of the process of the meeting.
Another way to have fewer meetings is to allocate a meeting day. I believe that to create high performing teams you and your senior leadership team need to have your weekly management meeting. Then each of your first reports need to have the meeting with their teams to decide on their priorities and their who, what, and when for the week. Those should just go back-to-back. Any other meetings that need to happen for planning purposes should just go back-to-back in a single day and then leave the rest of the week free to get the work done. In most companies that I know of, the work doesn’t actually get done in the meetings. The work gets done outside.
I am a great believer that to create positive energy in a meeting you start with the wins. Keep that right sized. In a 15-minute meeting, you can maybe do 1-minute of wins. In a 30-minute meeting, you can do 2 minutes and in a 1-hour meeting say 5-minutes on what is going well. I think celebrating wins is a great way to set the tone and to remind each person of challenges that have been overcome. It helps to right size whatever it is that you are going to work on.
There is no point taking your high-powered talent and putting them in a room unless there is debate and discussion. You are not there to all say “yes” to something. It is actually to have an informed debate and discuss whatever the topic is. To make sure that all the brutal facts are on the table. Then once you’ve had that discussion to come to a decision. Is it a decision for who, what, when is going to happen next? Is it a decision on whether to go ahead with a project or not? Whatever the decision is it should be part of the purpose of the meeting. You should be really clear on the outcome is that needs to happen.
If you are organizing a meeting, whoever is organizing a meeting, they are a lot more fun when there is an organized agenda and there is a person in charge who actually makes sure that the agenda happens on time.
When you close a meeting make sure that you go around the room and that you ask every person for a one word or one phrase that they take away from the meeting. First of all, it is really important that you understand that they heard exactly what it was that they were supposed to take away from the meeting. As opposed to what you assume that they took away from the meeting. It will be a lot more fun for you if they are in fact taking away what it is that you want.
Finally, in my decades as an entrepreneur one of the things I have learned is that any time a meeting goes on and I hear some laughter and people having a little bit of fun, I know that things are going to turn out okay. No matter what the brutal fact is, no matter the depth and challenge of what is in front of you, if there can be a little bit of humor, not humor at the expense of someone else, just genuine sharing and being able to laugh about our foibles and where we are at, then I think everything gets easier.
Go and have a lot more fun with your meetings. If meetings are not fun for you and you would like them to be, give me a call, send me a text, or send me an email. Let’s have a chat. I would love to find a way to make meetings more fun for you.
