“Well, THAT was a waste of my time!” We’ve all been there – you’ve probably been there at least once in your life. A meeting or conference that left you frustrated and annoyed and feeling as though it had been a waste of your precious time.

Meetings and conferences are one of the most effective communication tools that we have at our disposal, but often they do leave you wishing you could do without them. Why is that? Well, it has been my experience that (on average) people spend more time planning what they are going to have for dinner than planning how they are going to lead an effective meeting or conference event.

Couple this traditional lack of advance planning with some of the new distractions with which a meeting or conference leader has to contend and we have a recipe for disaster. Blackberries, PDAs, cell phones, pagers, laptops – although these technologies allow us to stay hyper-connected to our families, friends and colleagues, they also cause us to divide our attentions between them. Talk about multi-tasking! The real problems arise when attendees are physically “there” (in the room) but their minds are not focused on the agenda topics and speakers. That means that they’re not getting as much out of the event as they could be, and the group as a whole (and the organization involved) is not benefiting fully.  
 
So what can you do?

Some of the traditional strategies for structuring an effective face-to-face meeting or conference event still apply. Establish and share some ground rules early on. You can post them, put them on a flip chart or PowerPoint slide, but I like to shake things up a little by actually writing out the ground rules (one per 8½” X 11” sheet of paper) and placing them on the floor in the conference room doorway. It definitely surprises people as they try to carefully step around them, but more importantly, they read them! The one concerning electronic devices usually reads something like, “Put your cell phone on vibrate or better yet, turn it off!” 

A second effective strategy is to plan for sufficient break times of at least 30 minutes. This will allow attendees enough time to have some refreshments and check their e-mails and their voicemails. If you don’t give them sufficient time, they will just take it anyway – adults vote with their feet!

Another good strategy is role modelling. When you (or more importantly, a leader in the organization) makes a point of turning off electronic devices as the event is called to order, it sends a clear message to the other attendees. Now that’s all fine, but some will leave theirs turned on. That’s why you need to make your meetings and conferences really interactive. If your event structure is boring,  people are more likely to be distracted by their devices.

Structure every session to include hands-on, interactive and participative activities. If people are involved they are going to stay focused on the content and the organization will be able to enjoy the benefits of the full value that they bring to the table. Use brainstorming, mind-mapping, force-field analyses, divergent thinking, metaphorical thinking, analogies, small group discussions, and solo, dyad and triad tasks to keep people involved. These and so many other methodologies will help you run an event that is both unique and productive. You might even finish up early.

When hiring a speaker or an event facilitator, ask him/her what strategies they plan to employ to get and keep people involved in the content. Keep in mind that most meetings and conferences should be considered a learning event. After all, you dragged everyone into a room for a reason, and usually part of that is to impart or collect information so that people can go away and use that information in the work that they do or in their personal lives. Research revealed long ago that people forget most of what they hear, that they remember slightly more if you give them good visuals (handouts, slides, etc.), but that their retention rate is significantly higher when they are involved in their learning. Meetings are no exception.  
 
Learning to be interactive

Have you ever attended an event and you could barely remember what was covered later that day? Chances are that it was one “talking head” after another. Imagine if they had taken the same list of topics and included interactivity. I bet you would have gotten a lot more value out of that meeting and the organization would have reaped rewards from the investment of your time and energy, too. Okay, so that’s one set of distractions of which good event facilitators or planners need to be aware. The other set that is on our modern landscape is a little bit more challenging – learning disabilities. These include ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), PDD:NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder: Not Otherwise Specified), Asperger Syndrome, Dyslexia and so on. Even though greater numbers of children are being diagnosed, it is important to realize that part of this phenomenon is that we as a society are getting better at diagnosing learning disabilities. Our workplaces and our audiences are filled with people who already have these same challenges, with or without an official diagnosis. There was a gentleman in one of my workshops recently who, in complete frustration, blurted out, “For heaven’s sake, can’t they read!” I carefully pointed out that this could be a possibility. (It’s estimated that 48 per cent of adult Canadians are in need of some form of literacy upgrading.) Or maybe someone in the meeting is dyslexic or has difficulty sitting still for a long time. There are ways to help these “learners,” but most event structures don’t come anywhere close to these issues. Interactive methodologies can be very effective for helping people with learning challenges. Think about someone with ADD trying to sit through a conference that is one “talking head” after another – brutal! What if you mixed it up by scheduling some large- or small-group discussions right after each of the presentations? Maybe you could give people a chance to “regroup.” This not only allows different people to work together and learn from each other, but it also gives someone with PDD:NOS a “body break” which is essential to helping them maintain internal equilibrium. All meeting and conference participants, but particularly those who have learning challenges, will appreciate the use of good visual tools. Be sure that presenters have prepared an effective PowerPoint slide deck to accompany the spoken word.  I’ve heard that some people don’t think this is necessary, that being an interesting speaker is all that is required. Well, that kind of thinking is reflective of someone who does not have a solid understanding of learning methodologies. Let’s go back to that hear – see – do point that I covered earlier. Think about yourself. Do you know how to ride a bicycle? Did you learn by someone telling you? By watching someone else do it? These may have helped, but you didn’t really learn until you were able to try it out for yourself. Most of what people will remember is what they were involved in, and this is even more important for those with learning disabilities. 

Make Your Plan

Now that you know why interactivity is so important you need to make a plan. If you hire speakers and event facilitators, plan to ask them what methodologies they use to engage participants and to keep them engaged. This includes participants who can be distracted by electronic business gadgets, as well as those who may struggle to stay focused due to diagnosed or undiagnosed learning disabilities. If you plan and facilitate meetings and conferences yourself, think of them as a learning event and make a conscious effort to increase the interactivity factor. This is particularly important for longer events. Imagine a two-day conference with one “talking head” presenter after another. You may have been there at some point yourself. Chances are that you and a lot of other people in the room felt comatose by the end. Don’t be responsible for planning this type of event. If you don’t know what some of those interactive methodologies are or how to facilitate them, learn. Look them up on the Internet or buy a book.  Here’s one more really important thing: don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by these new ideas. Start with one improvement – just one way to make your events more interactive so that the hyper-connected participants will attend in mind as well as in body, and those with learning challenges will be able to participate more fully. Start there and grow. Celebrate your success and then add another idea to the next event. Before long you’ll get a (good) reputation, and people will be busting down the conference room door to attend your events.

Janet Stewart-Lussier is a professional speaker, trainer and facilitator and is the author of Let’s Talk Teambuilding – 10 Strategies for Becoming a High Performance Team Member. For more than 20 years, Janet has been engaging audiences with her carefully designed learning events. www.LetsTalkTeambuilding.com 

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 29th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Spring 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.