How to Effectively Grab Attention in Corporate Meetings

Here are few guidelines that will help you to make your meetings interesting.

It is always advisable not to schedule a meeting just after Sunday. People generally are not in a mood to attend meetings early Monday morning. Meetings after lunch should also be avoided. If you are a speaker then you are likely to get de-motivated when you see people napping just after lunch. Meetings planned after post lunch on Fridays may not have a good interaction as most of the members will be in weekend party mood.

Participants will play an important role in meetings. Refrain from inviting members who may not participate in discussions and who are passive in attitude. It is good to have a meeting with six to eight members. This will yield in to more productive discussions. You can always split larger groups in to smaller cells for effective and productive discussions.

Have an agenda in place when you conduct meetings. Every member involved in meeting should know what has to be discussed. It is common that discussions may get misaligned for any stupid reason. Hence it is necessary to keep people interested in meetings. Better way is to change presentation style every now and then.

People normally are not good listeners. They tend to decrypt body language and non verbal gestures easily. A good presentation will play a key role in meetings.

Every meeting should not have more than three or four objectives to be discussed. Also make sure room ambiance is good enough to make every individual comfortable in meeting room. A person may not speak well if he is chilled with freezing temperature.

If you take the lead in discussion make sure every member is charged enough to give his valuable suggestion. A highly charged and motivated individual will charge other members too. If possible arrange meetings in other places than your meeting rooms.

To start your meeting you should not take a formal approach of high hello. Always start with cracking jokes or some interesting slide. Provide refreshments at the beginning of the meeting. This will keep people interested as they always expect more.

Keep people busy by engaging them in brain activities such as puzzles. This will ensure their brains are active enough to give valuable inputs.

To check whether everyone is interested in discussion, throw a question at regular intervals. This will give you count of active listeners in meeting. But make sure you do not make a question and answer session.

Maintaining an eye contact in discussions is very important. This will make people comfortable. Always ask for an opinion. People are read to advise on any topic even if they do not have a proper knowledge of the subject.

You need to make your presentation as interesting you can. This will assure that people are not bored listening you. Make use of various graphics and audio video stuff in your presentations.

At end of the meeting, keep a question and answer session. This will help you to gauge the understanding of audience.