6.4 Tricks to Keeping High Energy and Making Meetings Work
A communication technique used by professionals in the room to keep conversation down to one person, is passing a tennis ball. The person with the tennis ball is the only one allowed to speak. You pass the ball to the person who would like to speak out. This technique keeps everyone alert and lively in the meeting.When there is a particularly long meeting lasting more than two hours, be sure to have time allocated to take a short five- to 10-minute break. Let everyone go get something to drink, go to the bathroom, and move around.
When you feel the meeting has dragged on and energy is starting to wane, have everyone stand up and stretch. This is a technique to get blood flowing and let people move around for a bit, helping them regain energy and attention to the meeting.
Bringing snacks and food to the meeting is a great way to keep energy up within the room. In the morning, donuts and coffee really help people start of the day right. Later in the day, snacks help people snap out of that late afternoon funk that seems to affect everyone.
The use of candy as a reward system works well to keep team members attention. When you are trying to come up with great ideas in a meeting, reward the person who does generate something with a candy bar.
6.5 Other Ways to Keep Meetings Fresh and Exciting
There are other ways to keep things exciting, including changing up the colors and style of the background on the presentation. You do not need one color all the time; do something different. Some project managers have a background that follows the seasons.
Another way to keep things interesting and exciting is to change locations. Moving the location of the meeting from the same old place to an off site location helps keep things fresh. An off site location could be a restaurant, outdoor park, a supplier, or a different conference room.
Change up the presentation or style. One funny joke some project leaders do to get laughs is make the "ugliest presentation known to man." This breaks all the rules on purpose to make it look so ugly, it gets laughs out of the team. It lightens up the mood and keeps everyone's attention.
Another technique is to give a team member the "keys to the car," and let them run the meeting for the day. This rewards good work, helps change up the leader role a bit, and more importantly, you can train members to become good leaders.
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