As a keynote speaker, I know that we’ve all sat through a bad meeting. You know: The kind that seems to last forever, with a lot of words being spoken but no decisions being made and no action steps taken. Meetings like that are pretty obviously a waste of time — and that’s equally frustrating for leaders and employees, all of whom have things they’d rather be doing. As a virtual keynote speaker during the pandemic, it is even more difficult to keep people engaged.
But there’s another problem with bad meetings: If all your meetings are unengaging, you’ll basically condition your team to arrive at each new meeting already expecting it to be a dreadful bore. You’ll have lost them before the meeting even begins. Now with virtual meetings the process has become even harder to not bore your attendees.
So what can you do? Is it possible to salvage your meetings? Absolutely it is. You’ve just got to be intentional in making each meeting engaging.
How to Make Your Meetings More Engaging
A few basic ways to do that include:
- Have a “hook” at the beginning of each meeting. Tell a funny story, show an entertaining YouTube clip, or simply take a show-of-hands poll — anything to get people engaged right from the start.
- Lead your meetings with a…
