People enjoy meetings when they are interactive. The more people talk, the more people will get to know each other. What a brilliant way to get them to enjoy their meeting experience!
Here are five ideas about how to make your meetings even more interactive:
1. Setting up the room. 
The more people face each other, the more they will talk with each other. Use round tables, rather than theater or classroom style, or the dreaded U-shape.
2. Break up cliques. Be creative. Get people to sit with new people. Use innovative ways to seat people differently. Whether it is star signs, hair color, or assigned placecards, you’ll create opportunities for people to stretch their associations to new people.
3. Use icebreakers. Icebreakers can be simple or complicated. Even it i is just asking your group to say a word that described their week, it will give your participants something else to talk about other than business when the meeting breaks. More on icebreakers…
4. Create discussion points. Ask small groups or dyads to discuss issues at certain points in the meeting. Once again, forced interaction that engages people. They can’t think about their weekend when they’re supposed to be brainstorming with their partner, can they?
5. Loosen your laugh trigger. When the person running the meeting is welcoming, and open to frivolity, everyone pays attention, and actually enjoys participating.
Although there is important business or training to conduct, you’ll raise the level of enjoyment when you PLAN for folks to interact with each other.
What other ways have you used to create interactions at your meetings?
