Meetings are an unavoidable aspect of doing business. Through meetings, you exchange information, generate ideas, develop solutions, and design procedures and systems.

In an article on meeting management, most surveys show that meetings are uninteresting time wasters for both employees and managers. However, a communication culture is required to fulfil the company’s goals and vision, and face-to-face communication is the most effective.

One of the most common mistakes that managers make is holding boring meetings that fail to interest their employees.

Meetings can be boring for a number of reasons from endless meetings, to being too long, unclear purpose, no visual element, one-sided meetings, one person does all the talking and inputs from colleagues are not taken and lots more. Meetings can be made more engaging and productive.

To avoid a boring meeting and increase efficiency, an icebreaker should be used to kick off your meeting, this may appear to be detrimental to keeping your meeting on track and on time, but it boosts involvement. Also, clear meeting goals and timeliness should be captured.

Also, incorporate amusing elements into your discussions. For example, you can introduce short appetizers to lighten the mood at intervals. One person should not do all the talking, assign tasks to different persons to handle.

To add a touch of fun and unpredictability to your meetings, surprise your team with a new venue or a fun activity you can also take them to a nearby park, out to dine or hire an event planner to liven up your meeting space.

Longer meetings can also be energized by taking short, standing breaks.

To end the meeting, assign tasks to be accomplished to involved participants, this will give the impression that the meeting was productive.

At the end of your meetings, ask your participants for reviews and incorporate their reviews into the next meeting.

Thank you for reading!