50 Activities to Kickstart Your Meetings

Sivasailam Thiagarajan

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119690917
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Réunions et présentations

Discover how to unleash the full potential of your meetings

Inefficient meetings plague even the most well-run organizations. In 50 Activities to Kickstart Your Meetings, productivity and games expert Sivasailam Thiagarajan explains how to use fifty tried-and-true methods to get the most out of every meeting.

This book teaches the strategy of employing games, activities, and simulations to facilitate extraordinary meeting productivity and creativity. It teaches meeting planners and organizers how to use games and simulations to enhance all types of meetings:

• Understand organizational opportunities and problems
• Generatealternative ideas
• Transform ideas into decisions
• Translate decisions into actions

Written for managers and executives at all levels of governmental, non-profit, and for-profit organizations, 50 Activities to Kickstart Your Meetings transforms traditional meetings into engines of creativity and growth. Thiagarajan uses the extensive experience he has gained in consulting for companies like Google and JP Morgan to teachmanagers of all stripes how to supercharge their next meeting.

1
MEMORABLE MEETINGS

Here's an activity based on the appreciative-inquiry techniques that build upon positive encounters and successful results.

Synopsis

The participants individually create a story about an engaging and effective meeting. They then pair up and share their stories. Later, they work in teams to identify the factors that contribute to these positive meetings.

Purpose

To identify factors that contribute to engaging and effective meetings

Participants

Minimum: 4

Maximum: Any number

Best: 8–20

Time

30–50 minutes

Flow

Form teams. Divide participants into two or more teams of equal size, each with around two to five members.

Create stories about positive meetings. Ask each participant to work independently to come up with a story related to a positive meeting. This story should feature an engaging meeting that produced effective results. It could be a real or fictional narrative. Encourage the participants to keep their stories short.

Share stories. After a suitable pause, invite the participants to walk around the room and pair up with someone from a different team. The two participants should share their stories with each other. Ask the participants to listen carefully so they can recall details of the other person's story at a later time. Announce a four-minute time limit for this activity.

Return to the team. After each pair has shared their stories with one another, ask all the participants to return to their original teams. At this time, each participant will have his or her own story along with a story from someone else.

Discover common themes. Ask members of each team to think back on all the stories they heard and identify the common themes among them. Ask them to make a list of the factors that contribute to an engaging and effective meeting. Also encourage the team members to brainstorm techniques for increasing the probability of such positive meetings occuring.

Pair and share the conclusions. Ask each participant to pair up with another participant from a different team. Ask the participants to take turns sharing their list of ideas that contribute to positive meetings.

Link to the Meeting

What's your story? Ask the participants to recall and apply the success factors from the stories they created. Encourage them to make the meeting the basis for a future success story.

2
WISHES

What wishes do participants have for your training session? Which of these desires are shared by most of the participants?

Here's an opening activity that helps the participants generate a list of wishes, discuss them, and identify the highest-frequency wishes.

Synopsis

Each participant writes a personal wish for the training session. Later, the participants exchange these wishes and identify those that occur with the highest-frequency by comparing them two at a time.

Purpose

To generate a set of wishes for the training session and explore their relative importance

Participants

Minimum: 10

Maximum: Any number

Best: 15–30

Time

15 minutes for the activity and 5 minutes for debriefing

Supplies and Equipment

• Blank index cards
• Pencil or pen

Flow

Identify two mediators. At the beginning of the activity, randomly select two participants to act as the mediators. Tell them that you will explain their task later.

Ask participants to come up with wishes. Invite participants to think of things they wish for the subsequent meeting. Provide examples as needed, such as these:

• Frequent breaks
• Relevance to my job

Listen to one or two examples from the participants.

Ask participants to write a Wish Card. Give each participant a blank index card. Ask the participant to select the most important personal wish for the meeting and write it on the card. Instruct the participants to work independently and keep their wish statements brief and legible. Also, tell the participants not to sign their card or write their name: submissions should be anonymous. Announce a two-minute time limit for this task.

Brief the mediators. While the participants are busy writing, explain what the mediators will be doing. During the activity, when two participants cannot decide which of the two wishes is more appealing, they will bring their cards to a mediator. This person will review the cards, listen to the participants, and quickly select one of the two. While they wait for indecisive players to approa...