Are your team meetings boring? Have you gotten into a rut of going over a similar agenda at every meeting? Are heads nodding off or are team members forgetting what was discussed? You can change that.

Regular meetings are an important activity for any business with more than two people on the team. Situations occur in the daily running of any business, and there is little time for analyzing and communicating with others. By getting together on a regular basis, experiences, knowledge, suggestions, etc., can be shared so all team members are working from the same base and benefit from each other’s experiences. Teams of workers should meet on a regular basis. The ideal frequency of meetings depends on a number of factors – that is a topic for another blog.

Any activity that is run on a regular basis can get boring or stale as time goes by. Therefore, since meetings are so important, it is necessary to keep them fresh. There are many ways in which you can add or change things to increase the chances of team members remembering what was discussed.

1. Make the meeting interactive

At least part of most of your meetings should be interactive. Be sure to bring your team members into the discussion. Nothing is more boring than just listening to someone talk about what needs to be done, what is being done wrong or just talking. This puts people to sleep. One way to keep meetings interactive is to ask questions rather than to just tell them what you want to say. If no one volunteers an answer, call on someone to answer. You can go around the table and ask for their opinions. Encourage discussion. The questions should be interesting and relevant to a subject on the agenda.

2. Occasionally create a theme for a given meeting

For example, the theme for one meeting might be handling challenging customers.  At the end of the meeting prior to this themed meeting, ask everyone to come to the next meeting prepared with an example of a situation they experienced and how they handled it. At the themed meeting give each member the opportunity to present their ideas. Then the group can have a lively discussion about other possible scenarios that could have worked well. The more interactive the meeting is, the more people will be engaged.

3. Start your meeting by reading a short piece of some article or book

Or, you can give each team member a copy of the article and give him or her a few minutes to read it. The article has to be related in some way to at least one of the topics to be discussed. Then ask them for their thoughts. If their thoughts do not generate an answer or answers you are looking for, you can them steer them along by saying: “What about….”? You might be surprised at what you learn from them. 

4. Bring food to a meeting

Depending on the time of day, it could be donuts, cookies or some other simple snack food. People are always more engaged when there is food involved. Greater engagement means greater attention and, therefore, greater retention of the information. Don’t do this too often, however, or they will come to expect it and be unhappy when there is no food. Make it a “special” treat meeting. 

5. Bring in a guest who can provide an interesting short talk

Many team members will listen intently to what an “outside expert” has to say about a topic when they would “zone out” if their leader said the same thing. It’s no different from a child who will listen to a friend’s mother better than their own. A stranger is always more interesting. Be sure, however, to speak with your presenter before the meeting to assure that he or she is going to say something agreeable to you.

6. Change the location of the meeting

If you always meet in the same room, find either another room or another place where you can hold a meeting. Any change makes the meeting a little different and differences liven things up a bit.

7. Break into sub-groups

If your team is large enough, you might break them into groups of two or three and assign each one a topic. Let them discuss it in their group for about ten or fifteen minutes and then report the results of their discussion to the rest of the group.

Meetings should rarely be completely top-down passing of information or orders, where the leaders make announcements of what is happening, what needs to be done or what mistakes have been made; and participants have little ability to offer any input. These meetings should have a sufficient opportunity for activities where the team members can feel they can contribute to the success of the company. The more involved the entire team feels, the more successful you will be, and the more variety you have in the meeting presentation, the more people will pay attention. Lead them – do not push them. And, last, but not least, keep meetings short and on topic.