Idea of the Month from Barbara Glanz
ENCOURAGE CREATIVE MEETINGS
THE IDEA:
This idea is excerpted from Barbara's book "Handle with CARE — Motivating and Retaining Employees" (McGraw-Hill 2002). To order this book, go to the PRODUCT section of Barbara’s website.
The Idea:
DID YOU KNOW?????
These meeting facts are reported from the 3M Meetings Management Institute:
• The average time spent in meetings is 1.7 hours per day per professional
employee.
• Executives spend at least 50% of their time in meetings.
• On an average day, more than 17 million meetings are held.
• Meetings with fewer than 10 participants make up 88% of meetings.
• The most productive meetings last under an hour, but the average meeting
length is about two hours.
Bob Greene, a syndicated columnist, humorously suggests: ”Give corporate
America tax breaks for getting rid of meetings and watch our economy soar,
and the mood of the workplace broaden into a half-remembered grin.”
Making meetings creative, innovative, productive, and positive is one of the
ways managers and supervisors can raise morale and keep employees feeling
good about their workplace.
The Idea In Action:
A creative communication idea for meetings that I’ve been sharing with my
audiences is to begin every meeting they attend, whether it is in their
workplace, their school, their church, or their community, with three
minutes of “Good News.” Just ask anyone in the meeting to share any good
thing that has happened to them—on the job, in their family, in their
community.
My clients are telling me that the results are dramatic. Not only are their
meetings more positive and productive, but they are shorter, people are
coming on time because they don’t want to miss the good news, and they are
learning things about one another they never knew before.
Since most meetings are focused on what is going wrong, what a joy it is to
begin with what is going right! We all need to be more positive people in
our workplaces and focus on the good we have done.
If you are uncomfortable with the “good news” idea, try starting every
meeting with some short sharing time on the human level (5 to 10 minutes):
• Have people share something they love—a hobby, a collection, a pastime.
• Have everyone tell one thing about their families.
• Have each person share the greatest way they can think of to spend a
birthday.
• Have each person share what they would do with a thousand dollars if they
could not save or invest it but had to spend it on something.
• Have each person share their favorite vacation spot.
• Have each person share where they grew up.
When people share something that is important or unique to them, it creates
relationships and teambuilding as well as adding some lighthearted fun. You
will see a difference in the amount of cooperation and sharing in your
meetings.
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