Business meetings can be of various types like project meetings, client meetings, collaborative meetings, motivational meetings and so on. For all meetings, keeping your team members motivated is the most important thing. It helps to uplift the energy of the team members and get them involved in the discussion. It also plays a crucial role in strengthening the relationship between the company and employees, lets the management connect with the employees both emotionally and logically, and make them feel that they are heard. Business meetings are transcribed and maintained with the support of digital transcription agencies.
A motivational talk during staff meetings provides employees the boost they need to meet business goals and also recover from a slower quarter. Here are some tips to keep your team active throughout the meeting.
- Open each meeting with a fun or interesting activity: People often consider meetings as boring. But you can make your meeting fun with interesting activities like playing a memory game or sharing a funny story. This helps team members to establish a connection and also create a sense of excitement for the meeting. If team members are enjoying each other’s company and also have a degree of interest, then they are likely to enjoy and understand the objective of the meeting. This will also help build team spirit. You can also invite a good motivational speaker.
- Provide basic necessities: For effective meetings, make sure that the needs of the employees are met. If your team members are hungry or thirsty or uncomfortable sitting on plastic chairs, it can make them less productive during meetings and employee morale will decline.
- Ask for employee contribution: Motivate your employees to speak up and contribute ideas about how to grow the business. Make it mandatory for all employees to contribute one idea to improve the company’s performance. Be encouraging, positive and open towards their ideas and opinions.
- Listen to employees’ concerns: As a facilitator, make sure to encourage discussion between the team members and listen to them. Ask them if they have any concerns or issues and if they are not willing to share in front of the team members, you may ask them to write it down on a piece of paper. Listen to their problem and in the next meeting read out a list of employees’ concerns and outline how they have been addressed by the company. This will make the employees feel that they are heard and wanted in the organization.
- No long meetings: Try to keep the duration of the meeting under one hour. Meetings can be shorter but longer meetings can be boring for the employees, a waste of time and could also affect the productivity of the employees. Remember that the team members have other work to do. Moreover, they will be more attentive in shorter meetings. Make sure to send out the agenda ahead of the meeting for better participation.
Starting the meeting with a motivating story is a good way to begin. Here is an inspiring story of Nick Santonastasso, an internet sensation who suffers from a rare condition called Hanhart syndrome. He has no legs and only one arm with an underdeveloped hand. He is a fitness athlete, model, engaging speaker and CEO of his own company. He has also made several prank videos. He competed onstage in the 2017 NPC Iron Bay Classic bodybuilding event. As an upcoming model he made it to the cover of New York Fashion Week Magazine and Reebok asked him to be a part of Be More Human Fitness campaign. With the immense support from his family, he kept pushing the boundaries of what he could do. Nick doesn’t see failure as negative, instead he sees it as a path to success. Try using motivational stories such as that of Nick’s to start off your meetings, which will encourage your team to stay motivated and energetic.
Your staff is the most important asset of your organization and keeping them motivated and involved helps them to be more productive and efficient. Make sure to maintain the minutes of every meeting you hold with efficient support from a meeting transcription service. This is important as a reference record that will prove useful when you arrange future meetings.
