Five weird tips for great meetings

Alexander Kjerulf recently wrote an article entitled, “Five weeeeeeeeird tips for great meetings.” The tips are somewhat unconventional, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call them weird. The tips are focused around trying to make meetings not brutally boring. The following are the condensed version of the five tips. Head over to the Chief Happiness Officer to get the full flavor:

1: Open the meeting with a positive round
Psychological experiments have shown that the way a meeting starts, sets the tone for the whole meeting. Start the meeting with complaints, problems and mutual blame, and that’s what you’ll get.

2: Interrupt the meeting regularly
I know you want to make the most of your meeting time - and that makes it tempting to think that “MAN, we have a long agenda today - let’s skip the breaks and get more done.” Only thing is, it doesn’t work that way.

3: Lose the table
What purpose do tables really serve at a meeting, except to give you a place to put down your coffee cup and to keep your head from hitting the floor when you fall asleep?

4: Get the body in there
Your body is not good at sitting still for extended periods of time. The longer you sit still, the more stiff and tired the body gets. And when the body is tired and stiff, so is the mind.

5: Use strategically placed silence
This is probably the one thing you find in no meetings. I mean - the purpose of meetings is to talk, right. Silence kinda defeats that purpose, doesn’t it?

No. The purpose of meetings is not to talk - the purpose of meetings is to arrive at ideas, solutions, plans and decisions.

Five weeeeeeeeird tips for great meetings - [Chief Happiness Officer]