A blog about leadership: 10 ways to make it easier for your meeting participants

Disturb your meeting participants in 10 different ways

A process is a chain of appropriate disturbances among people involved that shapes results and creates value.

Imagine 10 candy glasses with different types of candy in. First, you need to choose the varieties that help your participants the most. Second, you need to choose the quantity of the individual varieties. So it is with a process. You choose which parts of the process you want to use. You choose whether you want to use them partially or completely. You choose the order. You choose how many times you want to repeat. 10 candy glasses or 10 parts of a process. Here are the 10 sweets - uh, disturbances:

Candy Mix: Your preparation
You can prepare with the right tools. Before you start laying out your plan for the meeting, workshop, course or whatever your feature is, you can choose to prepare with, for example, a film, a book or a game. In your preparation you will search for a common thread, an entry angle, a turn. Search for tools that involve the participants. In what ways can you involve participants to explain to you what the topic is about? Search the web. Talk to some of the participants. Talk to others who have tried something similar. Talk to someone you have very little desire to talk to about just that topic.

Wine gum: Check in
Your participants are arriving. What should happen in the period from the first step until you start with the actual topic? Do the participants know each other in advance? Do they need to be warmed up? Should there be an icebreaker on the table? Should they get to know each other from different angles?

Marshmallows: Experience it
The story must be told. The situation needs to be scratched up. The film must be shown. The audio stub must be played. The simple, sharp reproduction must be rolled out. Then we can all join. Then we can all begin to understand the story, pull it apart, generalize, become even sharper on it. Now we are ready to move on.

Licorice: Try it
When we try it, we get in touch with new emotions. Try the new car. Try the new smart phone. Try saying this out loud. Only now can we decide whether we like it or not.

Chewing gum: Play with it
Looks a bit like 'try it'. Now we just do a whole lot of 'it' that no one has done before. We explore 'it'. We experience 'it' in many new ways.

Rusty nails: Do it
Now we use 'it' as it is intended. Now we are not just building a toy bridge. Now we are building a real bridge.

Lollipops: Talk about it
We learn endlessly by talking to each other about it. We get to know each other better. We discover new. We understand. We need to talk about it. And we have to talk about it in many different ways.

Big shut-up sweets: Think about it
It is also called reviewing or reflection. This is where we sit down in the armchair with a good cup of coffee and look up and look back on the many experiences. What really happened? What was it that made me think it was funny? What does it take to maintain all that?

Licorice pipes: Tie a bow
Sometimes we need a summary, an evaluation, an action summary. Who does what, when? A bow must be tied.

Chocolate twist: Check out
We need the concluding handshakes, verbal handshakes in the form of appreciations, praise, 'Thank you for today', 'See you again'. Now we can all part and go new ways.

Get help with your process
The tools you choose should help your process. The tools must also help your participants to understand, realize, become aware - so that they are best able to shape results and create value. Therefore: Get help to choose the right tool and get help for the best possible way to use the tool in your specific context.

Written by Michael Meinhardt, LEADERS WAREHOUSE.