How to Add Value as a Speaker: Make Meetings Fun and Exciting
Business leaders: If you want your associates to be creative, innovative, and flexible, make your meetings fun. Here are three examples.
Professional speakers: Learn from the creativity of your clients and get involved.
A QUIZ SHOW – Before I spoke at a small meeting for USA Today, the organizers conducted a “quiz show.” This was a great icebreaker and also served to educate their employees, using questions like: “Who writes the editorial column on page 3?” “What is our distribution in Cleveland?” “What was the headline on the Life Syle Section last Tuesday?” Small prizes like USA Today pens and notepads were awarded. This got the audience laughing while learning (and had the audience fully warmed up when I came on).
THE PRIORITIES GAME – Another time I was speaking at Levi Strauss. There were six tables, each with eight sales people. Each table received copies of the same thirteen examples of typical paperwork that crosses a salesperson’s desk each day. They then debated the priority for handling them. This was a great way to find out how the salespeople thought and for management to teach them priorities. I was as amazed as management was at how many different opinions there were on handling the same thirteen items.
“OSCARS” – A PacBell meeting was held around the time of the Academy Awards. The creative meeting planner set up an awards ceremony and asked the managers to wear formal evening dress. This sounded so creative to me that, even though my speech was later in the day, I wanted to be part of it (at no extra cost to the client). “Oscars” were given out in categories like customer service, sales, and money-making ideas. Wearing an evening gown, I sashayed across the stage to deliver the envelopes containing the names of the winners. As the nominees in each category were announced, a giant video screen showed their photos. The first two were always famous movie stars, the third an employee. Would you believe it? Pacific Bell employees beat out the movie stars every time! Everyone who accepted an Academy Award had to give a short speech. It was innovative, memorable, and fun.
This gave me the idea for my fifteenth speech for the Continental Breakfast Club (CBC). The year before, my talk had been “Wonder Woman: A Mythical Character or State of Mind?” which I delivered wearing my Wonder Woman costume.
One of my more creative clients, Dan Maddux, Executive Director of the American Payroll Association, heard about my Wonder Woman performance and booked me to do a similar presentation at his next conference, called “Are You a Wonder Woman or a Superman in Payroll?”
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