Everyone seems to want to stir up their meeting experiences for this New Year. Maybe you do so by utilizing new ways to put a slide presentation together, or incorporating more tech gadgets and tools, or just searching for ways to kick the energy level up a bit. At the core of wanting to make these changes, says Successful Meetings, is desiring for meetings to be more of an exceptional, innovative, and exciting experience.
“In an age where professional development and training is always at your fingertips thanks to the Internet, we know that the conference must deliver more than what can be found online. And that is experiences,” Scott Dzierzanowski, associate creative director of experiential agency Mosaic, tells Successful Meetings Senior Editor Andrea Doyle. “If we have not delivered an experience that fulfills that promise, then we have not done our job.”
The key, says Doyle, is to ensure that the meeting content comes mostly from audience engagement. The advice from Successful Meetings is to encourage your audience to problem solve together, to get everyone to think more critically, and to ignite debates. The core reason of why you host meetings is to accomplish a goal. More often than not, that goal is to ensure that your team is learning valuable information side-by-side. When you engage your audience with conversation and involved content, you’re ensuring your meeting is becoming more memorable.
This year, when you’re putting together curriculum for your next meeting, try flipping your script to include more questions than definitive statements. Put conversation starters into the agenda. Give the floor to your attendees as much as you can. You’ll notice a big difference!
