7 Best Ways to Make Boring Meetings Fun

Meetings are inevitable. They allow you to brainstorm ideas, share information, create systems and processes and find solutions. Although meetings help you achieve all this, painfully, these meetings turn out to be boring and devoid of any fun or excitement. This means that the employees who attend these meetings get really bored.

If your employees are not being able to pay attention, these meetings end up wasting your company’s time and resources without producing any conclusive result. So, how to make meetings fun? How to add that extra zing and excitement to your meetings?

Here are the 7 best ways to make meetings fun:

1. Set a clear purpose

You need to have a justified reason to schedule a meeting. The meeting should carry a purpose to seek equal participation from every individual present in the meeting. Once you have a clearly defined purpose for the meeting, set goals you seek to accomplish during the meeting.

Set a clear meeting objective. Ask yourself what you should do to give it direction and make it more constructive and goal-oriented. Ensure that at the end of the meeting every individual should feel that it was a productive session. Lead with a clear purpose and the rest will follow.

2. Begin with a positive note

Studies have proved that the beginning is the most important aspect of the meeting. How you begin the meeting determines how it will progress and end. Therefore, try to start the meeting on a positive note. Focus on reflecting on the positives, regardless of the purpose of the meeting.

For instance, if you have called a performance review meeting, begin by asking each individual to recount their one recent accomplishment, which they are proud of. Then have them share their tips for success or the best working practices they use/used to achieve their objective. If people are unwilling to share their experiences, initiate the process and make sure people participate. This is a nice precursor to tensed performance meetings.

3. Ensure participation from every person

The fastest way to make meetings fun is by ensuring that every member participates in it. Every meeting has those participants who do not speak or contribute unless coaxed. Equal participation is the essence of the fun and exciting meeting. If participation wasn’t necessary, the point of discussion could have been simply conveyed by email. A meeting is meant to inspire a collective debate and discussion before making a decision.

For instance, brainstorming sessions require every participant to speak up and throw in ideas. If a person is not responding or is reluctant to do so, encourage him/her to contribute. Sometimes, introverts may feel uncomfortable speaking in large, formal groups. Hence, try to make the session lighthearted and pressure-free.

4. Don’t let anybody dominate

Every successful meeting should have only one leader. The leader should lead the meeting with others following. Too many leaders in a meeting result in a boring and inclusive session.

If you are the leader of the meeting, you must speak more often than the others. You can allow others to speak up but do not let them take over the conversation. This is the secret to revive a dull and boring meeting. Redirect the comments and invite expert professionals in order to dissuade an enthusiastic talker.

Experts taking the time out to attend the meeting, bring their experience and deserve an opportunity to share it with the team. As a leader of the meeting, you must learn how to control your behaviour, which may undermine the team meeting.

5. Give the table a miss

Meetings are generally held around uninspired conference tables in dull, neutral-toned meeting rooms, which usually fail to exude any kind of enthusiasm or motivation. This time, you can, maybe, think differently by entirely removing the table from your meeting’s equation.

Tables subconsciously affirm the workplace hierarchy. It also brings an unnecessary divide among the employees. If you aim for equal participation and collaboration, you must first plan to make them feel equal. You can achieve this objective by removing the table completely from your meeting.

Hold your meeting in an open room and arrange the chairs in a circle. Let every member sit facing the rest; this fosters equality and encourages equal participation from every member of the team. If you want to highlight equality, you can add a circular table in the meeting room. But the best thing is to remove the table altogether.

6. Change the venue

Does the mention of a team meeting bring out wired expressions and reactions from your team? Then, maybe, it is time you change the venue of the meeting. Like the tables, even meeting rooms are generally dull and inspired, which fail to exude any motivation.

It is probably time to think out the box. Hold your meetings in unconventional locations. This will naturally foster excitement within your team who will then look up to the next meeting destination. Most of the time, the ability to concentrate is directly related to the uniqueness of the surroundings. Changing the venue of the meeting, as well as the meeting routine, promotes engagement and induces focus. Consider some offbeat locations to hold meetings, such as a staircase, parking lot or garden, to add that extra excitement.

7. Make a list of actionable items

Exciting and interesting meetings should end with each participant getting individual actionable tasks to reach their respective goals. When people come out of the meeting, they should know what they need to do next and what their individual goals are. If a meeting does not come up with this conclusion, the meeting has not achieved its desired objective and the activity was a failure.

Build a clear follow structure to encourage accountability among your employees. You can plan a follow-up meeting to check on the progress of individual employees. But make sure you inform the team during the meeting that you would be following up with them after a specific period. This will bring in purpose and make the employees attentive to the actions they need to take.

Implement these seven changes and your boring meetings will certainly become more productive and exciting. Besides, when employees experience such sessions and meetings, the entire organization benefits.