Today I just received ‘Delivering Happiness’ as a part of their blogger giveaway program. While I’ve yet to read the book, its title and Tony’s management philosophy got me thinking about meetings. It’s well documented that we hate meetings so you can love them. Even so, just because we hate meetings, shouldn’t prevent you from Delivering Happiness.

Deliver Happiness in your Meeting

Typically, when we meet, we discuss some meaty subjects. I find it easy for the tone of our meetings to get weighed down by the heft of what we’re discussing. To offset this, I try to intentionally inject a little happiness into the meeting- usually it doesn’t take much to improve the weight associated with the meeting itself.

How might this work? Some tactics I’ve used:

• Put together a fun image or graphic to send out with the meeting invite. One trick a former colleague of mine used was, he set up a meeting and called it a ” bag” meeting, complete with a red bag image in the invite. Everyone showed up wondering what a red bag was. His answer? “Oh it’s a brown bag that goes by a different color.” Everyone laughed and he ran a great meeting with strong attendance.
• Throw on a video. Is there a funny video that aligns with your message? Maybe before you begin the discussion or presentation, you could play a short clip to get everyone laughing and to set the context.
• Bring candy. Cheap candy goes a long way to earning good will.
• Begin with a warm up exercise.
• Build ‘catching up’ into the agenda. Socializing is important for team dynamics- build in time to let the team socialize and arrive without rushing by scheduling the meeting to start at 11:10 am or 11:05 am in contrast to 11:00am.
• Doesn’t just end the meeting on time, where possible, end it early.

Also don’t be afraid to ask your team for tips on what meeting changes would make them happier.

What are your tips for delivering happiness in meetings?