Beat the Meeting Blues: 10 Tips to Improve Meetings

For too many employees, the weekly Monday meeting is the longest two hours of the day. They may drag their feet to the conference room, yawn during the presentation, check their missed texts throughout the meeting, and contribute minimally to the conversation in order to leave an uncomfortable position as early as possible.

The team meeting is not just a mandatory event—it has utility that should directly benefit the participants and the company. When a meeting is regarded as a nuisance, however, the functionality is lost and the benefits disappear. To best take advantage of the meeting, here are ten tips to better engage your team and reap the benefits of their collaboration.

1) Augment your meeting space as needed.

A huge aspect of the meeting is the literal space in which your team gathers. Many employers take for granted that the conference room is always the appropriate area for a meeting. If your group is small, and your conference room is large, the extra space may inhibit the amount of intimacy and, subsequently, the level of engagement each participant feels. Move to a smaller room and, literally, bring people closer together. The physical proximity will increase their feeling of involvement, making them more likely to contribute to the conversation, at hand.

2) Stand up.

A recent study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, suggested that standing during meetings, rather than sitting down, increased the level of creative collaboration and decreased participants’ tendency to defend their ideas. Standing, while presenting, or speaking, also increases the level of engagement for the speaker. She or he will feel freer to move as they speak, to gesture with their hands and to use multimedia with their presentation. Additionally, the listeners will be more engaged by watching a dynamic speaker, rather than a static, seated speaker.

3) Provide snacks and drinks.

Just as breakfast is often touted as the most important meal of the day, it is important for your employees to be as well-nourished as possible throughout the work day. While you cannot guarantee that they will all enjoy a hearty meal that morning, you can provide snacks and beverages before, or during, your meetings to ensure a healthy team. Caffeine, electrolytes and complex carbohydrates all supply energy, which translates immediately into a more stimulated conversation between team members. While the idea of providing a box of donuts, or brewing a pot of coffee, for your meeting is certainly not a new innovation, it, at least, serves as a reminder of this timeless fact that your employees ‘aren’t themselves, when they’re hungry.’

4) Evaluate.

As an owner, you wouldn’t implement a new strategy without following it up with a review of the results. Similarly, it’s important to evaluate your meetings after each one, especially if you’ve implemented a new strategy or process. Evaluations of meetings serve many purposes; as noted prior, meetings serve a certain function for your business, so that the primary reason for evaluations is to ensure that you’re taking advantage of the full potential of your meetings.

Evaluate the level of engagement for your team, what types of creative brainstorming occurred during the meeting, and what responses did your team provide during times of open conversation. When evaluating the meeting, it’s good to be both critical and tolerant—critical of your own behavior and choices; tolerant of quick, perhaps unrealistic ideas that your team generated. This is essential for an honest appraisal of your meeting, which then allows for progress to be made in future meetings.

5) Switch seats.

Most teams have a designated location to meet, whether that would be the conference room, a manager’s office, or an open area. Within those habitual locales, many naturally fall into a consistent seating pattern. These unofficial, self-appointed seating patterns can inhibit the creative flow of your team, as their minds are not immediately engaged by a new setting or stimulated by a change of pace.

Instruct your team to switch up the seating, or direct who sits where, yourself. By forcing your team to sit in different places, they are struck by the novelty and will likely behave in different ways.

A normally quiet employee may be more talkative, once she sits in the back; a usually antsy person may be more invested in the meeting, if she is standing; two usually hostile people may collaborate more, if they are seated closer together. Experiment with your seating arrangements until you’ve developed a flow which best suits your team/project needs.

6) Make note of any unanswered questions.

One of the many reasons an owner may hold a meeting is to generate feedback from employees. Hearing what’s been going well, what problems have arisen and what solutions need to be developed, is paramount in a proactive business model. Employee questions are huge. Establish an open environment during the meetings, so that your team feels safe asking questions and do your best to answer them honestly and comprehensively. Give each question its due time and care. For the questions that you cannot answer, at the time, take note of them and return to them, after the meeting. When you follow-up later with the answer, that employee will remember it all the more clearly, because of the extra attention which you gave to his/her question.

7) Have your team determine the flow of the meeting.

As an owner, you may not be wholly aware of the proceedings for each topic at your workplace. Sometimes this is problematic, but it is a harsh reality of owning or running a business. Your employees and your team are your eyes and ears of the place. They are your right hand in business operations. Just as you rely on them for many processes in which you are not involved in, you should also trust your team to lead the flow of meetings. If they linger on a topic, which you only intended to mention, allow that discussion to continue. There may be a deeper issue beyond your initial perception of the problem. By sitting back and having your team determine the direction of the meeting, you may stumble upon a solution for a problem that you hadn’t even known existed.

8) Effectively manage chaos.

Former Visa CEO Dee Hock coined the term ‘chaordic leadership’ in 1999, which is a type of leadership where a manager balances a certain amount of chaos with order. Chaos or disorganization naturally elicits creativity in participants. Without strict order, your team may feel more comfortable with contributing to group discussions, leading to a possible discovery of traits and skills in people that you may not have previously noticed. Balanced with order, such as adhering to a few common expectations like time management or respectful communication, a chaordic meeting often leads to many creative discoveries and enhances employee engagement.

9) Make time management a priority.

Though it is impossible to know the full details of each of your employees’ daily schedules, you may as well give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are busy. Respect the possibility that they have other calls, meetings, appointments, or goals, for that day as you plan the meeting. Provide ample notice when scheduling a meeting, respect the time you set forth and show up as expected. Don’t force a longer meeting, if the content does not justify one. Time is an employee’s most valuable asset. Don’t waste it.

10) Change team membership.

Change inherently engages people, according to “The Meaning of Employee Engagement,” an article by William H. Macey and Benjamin Schneider, published in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Change can make people interested, uncomfortable, excited, and any range of emotions, which stimulates the mind. The more stimulated that your team members are, the more likely that they’ll engage with genuine ideas during the meeting. Consider changing the membership for your weekly meeting. By matching people in different groups, you will introduce your employees to new forms of collaborations and foster new ways for creative ideation to occur.