When you take a meeting facilitation training course with us, we equip you with the strategies and skills to run productive meetings. This not only saves your company time and money, but also gives your staff a sense of completion and accomplishment.
A good way to improve the quality of your meetings is to inject an element of humor. Of course, you still need to have a well-planned agenda for your meeting. Humor alone cannot save a meeting that is not well thought-out in the first place. While it is not a magic wand, humor can make your meetings memorable, fun and effective. Below are a few humor strategies you can try at your next meeting.
Make Fun Part of the Agenda
Make humor an integral part of your presentation by giving your topics humorous titles, adding cartoon or video game characters to illustrate a point, including funny quotes, etc. This will make your participants loosen up and relax and be more receptive to your presentation. Using humor in this manner reminds everyone to take the meeting topic, but not themselves, seriously.
Reward Positive Behavior
Give small prizes to participants who exhibit the type of meeting behavior you want to encourage. Be creative! Try to tie up the prize with the behavior so it will be more meaningful. Give an avian-themed prize for the early birds, for example, or light-bulb shaped cookies for great ideas. This will lighten up the mood of your meetings and might just encourage your attendees to participate more fully.
Discourage Bad Meeting Habits
On the other side of the coin, “punish” the behaviors you want to discourage. Keep the punishments light, so you don’t humiliate anyone. You want to gently discourage these behaviors, not offend your participants. For example, as a reminder to everyone to keep their contributions brief, sound a buzzer if someone is taking too long to make his or her point.
Have a Theme for the Meeting
Choose a theme that is simple and easy. Have participants come wearing the tackiest item of clothing they own or a wacky accessory. Of course, you have to give a prize at the end of the meeting for the best outfit.
Humor is a great stress-reliever. No matter how serious the topic of your meeting is, find a way to inject humor – it will put you and everyone else in the right frame of mind.
We offer several facilitator training courses and even online facilitation training for those who cannot make it on-site. Call us if you need assistance with corporate facilitation or if you’re looking for a professional strategic planning facilitator for your next strategic planning session.
