Events such as sales meetings and conferences are an essential of corporate life—but if they aren’t structured right, they aren’t worth the company’s financial investment or the participants’ time. Consultant and author Priya Parker shares four smart ways to break out from meeting inertia in the Wall Street Journal:
A few small changes can have an enormous effect on how people feel about meetings, how they interact at them and what they take away. Some years ago, as part of my advisory work, I set out to learn the secrets of the most transformative gatherings. I interviewed dozens of organizers—including a choreographer from Cirque du Soleil, a Japanese tea ceremony master, a director of an Arab-Israeli summer camp and a conference curator—to understand how they create galvanizing, generative moments. Here are a few of those lessons:
Set the stage. Whether it’s your weekly meeting or your annual off-site, the culture of a gathering takes shape early, often well before the event. Give your gathering a fresh, specific name. Is it a sales meeting, or a How to Crush It This Quarter Meeting? Language and tone give people cues about what to expect … Wall Street Journal
