The document discusses ways to make meetings more engaging and transformational for attendees. It suggests incorporating elements of edutainment like quizzes, personal stories and gamification. Meetings should start with passive participation and evolve into active participation. If the setting is comfortable, personal experiences shared can significantly impact others. Productive meetings use personalized context to create positive reaction opportunities. Transformations are highly personal experiences that can be shared. Meetings should have a distinct beginning, middle and end to facilitate transformation.

1. ENHANCING THE MEETING EXPERIENCE

2. TRANSFORMATIONAL EXPERIENCES
Transformational experiences have been studied for many years, especially in the
events industry where consumers regularly pay to attend experiential events.
Joseph Pine, the author of The Experience Economy, writes about the process of
capturing attention in order to cultivate a transformative

4. MEETING ENGAGEMENT
The highest level of meeting engagement
would be to invoke a transformational
experience for meeting attendees. While
this may seem like an experience
reserved for a weekend of inspirational
seminars or a retreat, this chapter will
encourage you to think about meetings as
mini-transformational opportunities

5. SPEND TIME TOGETHER
As meeting members spend time together, attention and focus are
foundational to engagement. Perhaps the easiest way to conceptualize the
idea of invoking engagement in an educational setting is a new term,
Edutainment.

6. EDUTAINMENT
It is a process of education that uses
entertainment to engage audiences
with the purpose of educating them
in the process.
In addition, weave personal stories and
anecdotes into key points in the
meeting where helpful; they can often
help reinforce key messages and build
retention.

7. POWER TO
EDUTAIN
A good meeting host will plan out simple, but
engaging points that have the power to edutain.
For example, a short quiz with a funny but
relevant question can help to “edutain” an
audience.

8. MOST MEETINGS WILL START WITH PASSIVE
PARTICIPATION
Most meetings will start with passive participation which can naturally evolve into active
participation as the meeting progresses. For example, passive meeting engagement may start
with a personal notepad in which attendees write down ideas about questions they may want
to ask later in the meeting. Active participation involves asking questions about the content.

9. FEELING OF CONNECTION AND SHARED VISION
As the educational process in a meeting naturally progresses, a reaction
from meeting participants can take multiple forms. A positive reaction
from meeting participants involves a feeling of connection and shared
vision

10. ALL TRANSFORMATIONS ARE PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
Productive meetings can use personalized context to unveil positive reaction opportunities
for meeting participants. If a transformation in meeting participants is reached, it will likely
include the feeling of achievement and the sharing of aspirations for the future.

12. TURN A CORNER
WITH THE HELP OF
A NEW
PERSPECTIVE
This could be described as the “A HA” moment
that helps you turn a corner with the help of a
new perspective that was shared during the
meeting.

13. 1
2
3
TRANSFORMATIONS
Transformations are highly personal experiences
They can be shared
If meetings have a comfortable setting these
personal experiences can have a significant impact
on others when shared.

14. GIVE YOUR MEETING
A distinct
beginning
Middle
End to facilitate the
possibility of
transformation.

15. THE VIRTUAL WORLD CAFE
It is designed to break large
meetings down into smaller
groups of four people
Every 15 to 20 minutes three
meeting attendees are rotated
between new break out groups
The idea is a little bit like speed
dating in groups
The idea is to have one
meeting host who is able to
have three people join them in
a set number of rounds

18. AN OPEN SPACE COLLABORATION SESSION
It is actually an organization of multiple independent meeting spaces that attendees are encouraged
to jump between. The idea of having multiple conversations going on at the same time allows
participants to join each meeting like a social butterfly or dig into a meeting like a busy bee.

21. GAMIFICATION
Many traditionally boring aspects of business
are being reinvented to promote education
through entertainment with a process called
gamification. Gamification is a highly
effective way to promote active learning
through the use of a game

22. JONAH BERGER, THE AUTHOR OF NUDGE
While gamification and sales competitions may motivate some, Jonah Berger,
the author of Nudge, notes that “if not carefully designed, social comparisons
can lead people to get disheartened, give up and quit
if not carefully designed This Social comparisons can lead people to get disheartened

23. THE FOCUS SHOULD BE ON HEALTHY COMPETITION
That encourages
productive engagement
Peer pressure can be a tool
used for good, but it needs
to be managed
Bringing together specific sets of people in small
groups helps motivate people to work harder without
ostracizing anyone for staying at the bottom of the
leaderboard

24. SOCIAL FACILITATION
Social facilitation helps teams build commitment for shared projects
and responsibility for showing up and getting the job done

25. THE MERE PRESENCE OF PEERS
The mere presence of
peers can make it harder
for others to give up on a
project
Managers can leverage the
power of group presence
with online communication in
order to maintain social
facilitation even with far-
flung teams that are spread
around the world

26. USE A SCORECARD DURING MEETINGS
To keep teams
accountable while
keeping the process
light and fun
Custom scorecards can
be created for
managers who work
with their teams on
specific projects
Managers can use
scorecards with five to
ten data points that
are tracked during
weekly or monthly
meetings

27. A WELL-PLANNED
“EXIT STRATEGY”
Once your meeting is coming to an end, it’s ideal to plan a
memorable meeting exit. A well-planned “exit strategy”
should support or reinforce the goals established by your
meeting agenda.

28. THE ROLE OF SMALL GROUP MEETINGS
Malcom Gladwell expanded upon the idea of social facilitation in his book The Tipping Point in a
few important ways.

29. GLADWELL STUDIED METHODISM’S FOUNDER JOHN
WESLEY, AND HIS FOUR THOUSAND MILE JOURNEY
OVER HORSEBACK MEETING WITH SMALL GROUPS
Wesley traveled from town to town and stayed in each town long enough “to form the most
enthusiastic of his converts into religious societies, which in turn he subdivided into smaller
classes of a dozen or so people,” according to Gladwell