Are your project meetings boring and ineffective?
What do you see in your meeting room: heads resting on hands or arms, eyes on phones or laptops, people coming in late or leaving early, blank stares when you ask questions, hands paging forward through documents?
What do you hear on your conference call: silence when you ask questions, lots of beeping as people join and leave, dogs barking, kids crying, toilets flushing (Seriously.)?
Project meetings should be interactive and efficient. When face-to-face, you should see eyes and not eyelids or foreheads or bald spots. On conference calls, you should not have to call a person’s name 6 times before they respond. During all meetings, attendees should be asking questions, challenging assumptions, providing input and sharing opinions.
Wake ’em up!
No more napping! Grab a cup of coffee and get your meetings back on track. Here are a few ways to energize your stakeholders and inspire meaningful collaboration:
1. Use facilitation skills that engage your stakeholders.
Design meeting activities that get stakeholders thinking, moving, drawing and questioning. Help stakeholders reveal assumptions and make connections between ideas. Create an environment that inspires innovation and creativity.
Resource: BA-Squared Workshops
2. Get visual…engage the eyes.
Multitasking is a battle between the ears and the eyes. When meetings require stakeholders to listen and watch, then multitasking stops. So, anticipate meeting topics and find a way to make them more visual. List pros and cons, diagram processes, create timelines, draw inputs and outputs, group ideas, rank priorities.
Resources: whiteboard, paper, post it notes, markers or virtual equivalents
3. Make sure everyone participates.
Whether your meetings are virtual or face-to-face, you need input from ALL stakeholders. (If you don’t need their input, why did you invite them to the meeting?) Be sure the extroverts and the power players aren’t the only contributors. Use meeting strategies that solicit input from all people.
Virtual Resource: Stormboard