Weird Tactics for an Effective Meeting

Meetings. For some, there are few other words in the English language that can whip up as much fear or loathing. The business world is rife with morning meetings, weekly meetings, status meetings, and project meetings, to name a few of the usual suspects. With so much getting together and talking, a lot must be getting accomplished. Often this is not the case. Meetings have been shown to detract from productivity, waste time, and enrage employees. A solution would be to get rid of these business vampires, but we all know that there are occasionally good meetings. And a good meeting can make things happen. The best idea then, is to make sure your meetings are considered “good.” There are many, widely known tips for a successful meeting, but sometimes you need the unusual, the strange, or the weird to bring out the best in your employees and their time spent together.

END of the Meeting
In the spirit of these “outside of the box” ideas for good meetings, let’s begin a little differently by looking at what to do at the end of your meetings. Pick an unusual end time – 10:27am for example. Not only does this grab the eye, it makes your employees remember the meeting times better. Since this particular time is at the forefront of their minds, they will be looking at the agenda (the agenda they all have – a normal meeting tactic) and estimating how much time they have until the end. Not so they can leave, but so that everything gets done. End the meeting at the exact odd time that you chose. This reinforces your message and shows a good example for meetings to come.

Of course, meetings don’t exist to fill time; they are there to get things done! If you need more time at the end of your meeting, exercise a time card. A time card is a preset block of time you can hold up to get things wrapped up. For example, you would have 27 sec., 2 min 8 sec, 6 min 43 sec, and 9 min 51 sec cards. As you can see, these cards go hand in hand with a quirky end time. Having multiple choices of time allows flexibility to wrap up your meeting. Once you use one, however, you have to throw it away. It’s a symbol to your employees. A symbol that says, “Yes, the meeting went long and we still need to finish, but I will not waste your time.”

Obviously you need to make sure you have a large, programmable digital clock on hand or the spirit of these tips are somewhat lost.

DURING the Meeting
The traditional business meeting is people in chairs at a table. Depending on the size of the meeting – how many attendees there are – the table could be small or massive. While a long conference table is imposing, it could actually hamper the effectiveness of your meeting. Why not get rid of the table? Start with an empty room and include enough chairs for everyone. To show equality, you can arrange the chairs in a circle. If there are presentation materials, put them on a wall and your chairs in a semi-circle around them. With nothing between you, everyone can have a better look at body language and your communication will improve.

Maybe you don’t even need the chairs. If everyone is standing, people are free to move around to form smaller groups, stretch, or easily get more refreshments. A more subtle reason for going chair-less is that if everyone has to stand for the entire meeting, they will keep their comments brief so they can sit down again.

Breaks are important during a meeting, so why not increase their frequency? It goes against conventional thinking that more breaks equals increased productivity, but it makes sense. Normal break planning is five minutes for every hour, mainly because it is difficult to concentrate if you need to go to the bathroom. Why not have a two-minute break every thirty minutes? People are usually energized after a break, even a small one, so you could double your productivity.

You can use that little break in a different way. If it’s time for a short break and you have just introduced or resolved a major point, why not have two minutes of silence? A meeting without talking is completely opposite of normal, but those silent minutes could really pay off. Without having to pay attention to anything but their own thoughts, someone could get a flash of inspiration to solve a problem, or spot a major flaw in a solution. The first few times you try silence will be strange, but stick with it.

Again, don’t forget your timer.

START of the Meeting
There are many good icebreakers to use when a meeting begins like telling a joke, singling someone out for praise, or announcing some good news. Let’s look at icebreakers in a different way. Since you are probably going to do most of the talking from here on out, why not let your participants start things off? Go around the table and give each person thirty seconds to say something good. It could be an accomplishment; a favor they did or received; it could even be a joke. Not only is the ice broken, but they have set a positive tone for the rest of the meeting. Another way to look at it is the meeting has just started and they have already participated more than you have.