15 Interesting Team Meeting Ideas For Enhanced Team Engagement
Office or team meetings are an important part of a successful organization. However, the most critical issue with meetings is that they are monotonous and do nothing to improve employee engagement. But what if you come across some great team meeting ideas that can help the efficiency of these meetings skyrocket?
You must tap into your creative side to make meetings more impactful, effective, and enjoyable. Moreover, you need to keep the meetings short yet effective to meet the goals and objectives of the meeting. Also, did you know that In 2020, 36% of the meetings’ duration was evaluated to be 30 minutes, while only 20% of meetings ran for one hour.
If productivity is your goal, the hour-long meetings do nothing to help your cause.
Don’t be worried about how you can inject engagement into your team meetings. This article will provide great and healthy ideas for encouraging and engaging your employees during meetings.
15 Great Team Meeting Ideas For Better Engagement
Here is a list of some ideas you can try out for your team and see if it works to increase engagement and reduce fatigue.
1. Start With A Quiz
One surefire way to make team meetings interesting is by starting them with questions relevant to the discussion. You can think of it as a brain teaser kind of a thing that will test your employees. The main aim is to understand how well your employees are acquainted with the topic.
Moreover, it will also turn them into active participants and discuss ideas they would otherwise have missed out on. This will create a perfect opportunity to prioritize the topics discussed in the meeting.
Make sure the questions are engaging and interesting.
2. Start the meeting with a win
It is always a good idea to start something on a positive note. Start any meeting that the team has accomplished. This will motivate the employees to keep doing the good work. It is a positive reinforcement that will undoubtedly boost the meeting’s energy and employee morale.
Employees will look forward to attending such meetings because they know the environment will be positive and constructive.
Be appreciative of each team member and their contributions to the organization.
3. Try Out Different Locations
When meetings are conducted in the same setting, it can become dull and monotonous in the long run and drain the employees. There is a higher chance that It will diminish their willingness to join the meeting in the long run.
So, the best alternative to keep the encouragement alive is to conduct team meetings in different locations. This will allow a change in scenery and a refreshing environment that can help boost creativity.
(Source: Twitter)
Keep in mind to maintain consistency and do not overdo it. Overdoing will lead the employees off track, and the employees will miss the whole agenda. It will cause an eventual drop in productivity and engagement.
4. Role Play
To make things interesting during your team meeting, you can introduce the idea of role-playing. The focus should be on incorporating the element of fun without getting sidetracked from the main topic.
You can assign roles to your employees to act as your client, providing a different perspective. This will enable you and your team to think and prioritize the client's needs. In the long run, with the help of this idea, you can increase customer satisfaction and build a concrete reputation for the organization.
5. Set A Clear Agenda
Before the meeting, make sure you have a clear plan of action. It gives a clear purpose and meaning to the team meeting. With the help of the plan, employees can determine the significance of the meeting and align their work accordingly. If there is no alignment, there will be a drop in productivity and performance. A survey has shown that 97% of employees believed that a lack of alignment within a team directly impacted project outcomes.
However, the most important thing about setting the agenda is that employees will not get sidetracked. It will help them to stick with the main purpose of the meeting and focus their limited time on things that matter. On top of that, it allows the team to brainstorm new ideas about the topic, eventually leading to a better way of doing things.
6. Encourage Opinions
Team unity is a crucial component if you want to achieve long-term success. It is hard to bring out the best in a team without unity. A survey found that 90% of employees believed decision-makers should seek others' opinions before making a final decision. This helps in promoting inclusiveness and maintains a balance.
Every team member must be on the same page to perform at their best. The team should have mutual respect and understanding, which is achievable when everyone is treated equally.
During team meetings or discussions, encourage everyone to share their opinion. Everyone should put forward their ideas that can produce productive sessions. Doing so will help you build a creative team and be ready to face new challenges.
Motivate your team before the session starts and make them comfortable.
7. Focus on Icebreakers
The initial minutes of a team meeting are critical, as it will set the tone of how the meeting will turn out. Use the first minutes to conduct some icebreakers, such as asking questions about how they are doing and what is on their weekend agenda.
For example, ask everyone to share their funny experiences of their past that will lighten up the mood. Ask it to a random person or ask everyone to share their responses. The only rule is that it should make everyone loosen up and share a laugh. The more laid back they are, the better the team meeting will be.
Read more: 200 Best Icebreaker Questions For Work
8. Keep the meeting flexible
Flexibility is something that everyone in the organization enjoys. Be it during work hours or holidays; it is a perk that is essential. The same goes for team meetings as well. A flexible team meeting will keep the team's schedule open and allow employees to join in the conversation whenever they want.
Remember to have a fixed timing and a clear plan in front of everyone so that no one misses out on crucial information. A flexible meeting will also enhance your work culture and create a unique work environment.
9. Keep an Hourglass
Using an hourglass during a meeting might seem like an old-school thing; however, it can be fun to do during meetings.
You can assign different employees as timekeepers during various discussions and ask them to keep track of the time. Once the designated time is over for a particular topic, they will shout “time” so that everyone can move on to the next one.
This will increase your employees' adaptability, quick thinking, and problem-solving ability. Moreover, doing so will enable engagement during meetings, and employees will think out of the box.
10. Introduce a food pantry
Meetings can be exhausting, so providing refreshments during the discussion can work wonders. It will help rejuvenate the employees and provide the necessary break.
You can introduce a food pantry to make the idea successful at the meeting location. Keep things flexible and instruct your employees to access the pantry whenever they feel like it during the discussion. The main strategy behind introducing such an idea is to improve participation and concentration while reducing employee burnout.
Do not include foods that might harm the religious sentiment of an employee.
11. Build A Wall of Ideas
As previously stated, a clear plan or agenda will be the foundation of your meeting. It will allow ideas to flow between members of your team. And, to have a robust discussion about all the ideas discussed, you'll need to put them somewhere where everyone can see them. The best way to accomplish this is to construct an idea wall to project their creativity. You can use sticky notes or a whiteboard to allow employees to present their ideas to the team.
Doing so will maintain a balance between the team members and create an environment where everyone is treated equally. This would boost morale and encourage employees to become more creative.
12. Hold Short Meetings
The secret to a productive meeting is to keep it short and to the point. Hold your team meetings no longer than 30 or 40 minutes. A short span of time tends to be more constructive as employees like to spend less time in formal meetings.
Employees lose interest in the meeting if it stretches for too long, and they tend to get distracted, which diminishes the efficiency of each individual. In the long run, extended and frequent sessions will negatively affect the workforce's overall engagement.
13. Rotate Members to take the lead
As a manager, you might feel your responsibility is to take the lead during every team meeting. But that can be quite daunting most of the time. To test out the leadership qualities of team members, you can delegate the duty to each team member.
This will provide a different dynamic to your team meetings and allow you to explore different perspectives. Moreover, rotating team members will help you strategize for various projects without hiccups. It will also foster learning and provide a new experience for the employees.
Try to give each member a different task to lead a meeting.
14. Use Different Themes
Meetings, when done frequently, can be boring and exhausting. And if the same topic is discussed over and over with the same basic idea, employees get sidetracked quite easily.
However, you can start a meeting with different initiatives while keeping the agenda clear to everyone. Themes include famous television series or mythical presentations like The Office or The Big Bang Theory. Remember that it should be enjoyable, engaging, and to the point so that employees have a thorough understanding of the project and are not missing out on anything crucial.
15. Keep Q&A Sessions
Conduct a brief Q&A session after each meeting to leave no one in the dark about what was discussed. This will promote inclusivity and allow the employees to put forward their concerns.
However, not addressing your employees' concerns might lead to confusion that can hamper the project's success. Moreover, if employees do not have a full picture of everything discussed in meetings, there may be conflict in later team discussions.
Summing it Up!
Use these ideas the way you like and get creative around it. Afterall, effectiveness and productivity is all you want while conducting meetings. Moreover, try to be more inclusive and empowering so that employees feel valued and an important part of team meetings.
Mrinmoy Rabha is a content writer and digital marketer at Vantage Circle. He is an avid follower of football and passionate about singing. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com
