In the after-glow of a great Saints win last night (WHO DAT!), I thought I would give a few tips on how to make your meetings a little more New Orleans and little less Viking-ish. Taking the boring out of the afternoon meetings while still making them highly productive can be a tough task. Here are some tips that I hope help.
1-Make everyone’s life better and implement the 10-40 rule.
Everyone knows that there is nothing worse than listening to someone stand up and read every single word that is on their power point slide. Besides being mind-numbingly boring, it always comes across to me that almost no thought was put into what was actually going to be said. After all, if you are involved in a business meeting, then there is a good chance that you have mastered the fine-art of reading and have moved beyond needing someone to read for you. The 10-40 rule completely changes the idea of presentations around from being all about your slides to making them an aid in your overall presentation. The idea is that your first 10 slides should never have more than 40 words on them. The highly effective presentations, such as shown on TED.com, use far less than 40. According to researchers at Penn State, achieving the word-picture balance has been scientifically proven to be the most persuasive to our brains.
If you have a more casual approach to your meetings, it might be effective to start putting your employees on a rotation where they give a 5 minute presentation about their field. This not only breaks up the monotony, but it can also be informative for the entire group!
2-Pay Attention
There are many peer-reviewed studies that show that senior executives’ actions can reverberate throughout an entire organization, ultimately undermining or bolstering their cultures and performance levels. When you are engaged, your team is much more inclined to do the same. Hearing is passive, while listening requires energy and attentiveness. The same applies to looking and seeing. Just because you have the physical ability to look at things doesn’t mean you’re using that gift to its full potential. Make sure that when your team presents their ideas, you are giving your full attention. In a recent study, 64% of employees felt their bosses where incompetent. The reason they gave was that their bosses were so disengaged, they felt there was no way they could know what was going in the overall-organization and had even less knowledge of what the employees specifically did.
3. Take great notes
I worked for a guy that took amazing notes of every meeting that we had. Due to his notes, our meetings were seamless-he always knew right where to pick back up. Not only did this convey that he really valued my work, it also saved a ton of time!
4. Finish off with a quiz
I recently read an article about a start-up company in California that ends every staff meeting with a five question, no pressure quiz on what was discussed in the meeting. Whoever shouts out the answer first gets anything from a piece of candy to a $5 starbucks giftcard. After someone gets an answer right they are no longer eligible to answer any more questions (this helps prevent the know-it-alls from dominating). For their company, it is a great incentive for everyone to pay attention and livens the meetings up.
Hopefully some of these ideas will bring some life back into your company meetings! Happy Friday!
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