Planning, consideration make meetings successful

A few years ago, I attended a five-day meeting at a gorgeous resort in Pennsylvania. The meeting, which I began to call the “Bataan Death March,” was a combination of poor planning, insensitivity and poor nutrition. A few of the highlights:

For five days, we went to meetings from morning to evening with few breaks. On three of the days, we were given a topic to discuss at lunch with no time to go back to our rooms.

On one day, we were served no protein until dinner and there was no place (or time) to buy a protein-rich snack. Breakfast consisted of fruit and pancakes. Lunch was vegetable-rich pasta. We fell on the chicken dinner like ravenous wolves. There was candy on the table in the meeting. Like we needed more sugar?

Most of the presentations were on PowerPoint and couldn’t be seen by the people in the back. The room was usually dimmed, so many drifted off after lunch. Most of the presenters were not great with PowerPoint, so much time was lost flipping back and forth between slides.

It had been their policy in the past to give a day off about midway through the week. The new policy: We would be “released” at 1 p.m., but had to be back by 7:30 p.m. for a meeting that would last until 9:30 p.m.

It didn’t matter that we were at a five-star resort in the middle of a historically significant area. We all felt exhausted and depressed due to few breaks, lack of protein, inefficient visual aids and the feeling of being driven like cattle. An interesting sidelight of this meeting was that people began quitting in droves afterwards. I was one of them!

As a professional speaker, I experience meeting madness in other forms. I am usually treated very professionally. Sometimes, however, truths come out in unusual ways for me.

I was asked to give the concluding keynote on humor at a Kansas bankers’ conference. It was a very frustrating experience as the audience was barely reacting. For a humorous speaker, this is deadly. I am telling the stories that have been hits in the past while the audience stares at me like people painted on a backdrop. It felt like some audiences when I was doing stand-up comedy at 1 a.m. to a bunch of drunks.

I got a ripple of applause and people ran out of the room. Not too flattering. Here’s what I found out: The entire group had gone to a Kansas City Royals game the night before which went to 17 innings! They got back to the hotel after midnight and started again at 8 a.m. All were exhausted and many were hung over. I was the last speaker of the conference. You do the math.

Here’s a meeting checklist that may help:

• Schedule enough breaks. If you have people coming from a distance, start the meeting a little later the first day. It won’t hurt for your attendees to have a little time to rest. Instead of starting at 8 a.m., try pushing it back an hour, or even two.

Give people time to re-charge during your morning and afternoon breaks. Try 20 minutes instead of 15 minutes.

• Make sure that you provide healthy food and snacks. Candy, cookies, soft drinks and coffee are the standard snacks, and you wonder why attendees are drifting off? What about protein bars, cheese and crackers, fruit and juice? Cheese may be more expensive than cookies, so cut back on something at the banquet. Instead of the beef, offer chicken. Instead of mousse, offer vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup on the table. Instead of soft drinks, just offer iced tea and coffee at breaks. Hotels want your business, and you may be able to negotiate better break choices.

• If you have a big evening event, start a little later the next day. The night after the closing banquet, an outing or party, start at 9 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. If your attendees are leaving that day, they will appreciate being given the time to pack and/or check out.

• Make time for fun. If you are bringing a group together from out of town, give participants a chance to enjoy the area, at least for an afternoon and evening. If you don’t give your participants this kind of break, don’t go anywhere exciting. What difference will it make?

I will never forget going to a meeting at a hotel that was right on the beach. The problem was that we got no time off, and it was winter. When the meeting ended, it was freezing cold and the tide had come in. It was bittersweet to see the beach from the meeting window.

• People learn in different ways. Make sure that your presentations are not all lectures with PowerPoint. For the visual learner, PowerPoint is great. This person can read along with the lecturer. For the auditory learner, PowerPoint is death by torture. For others, participation and movement bring learning.

• Remember that learning takes place when people are happy and relaxed. If attendees begin to feel that they are being punished for some unknown sin, they will begin to rebel in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. At my Pennsylvania meeting, a fellow attendee got a taxi and went to the store to get cheese. “Who’s going to notice I’m not there? They don’t know I’m here anyway.”

The No. 1 way to avoid “meeting madness” is to plan well, keeping variety and health in mind.

Sinara Stull O’Donnell is a professional speaker and writer through Springfield-based SinaraSpeaks. She is the author of “Be The Star Of Your Life: Are You Ready For Your Close-Up?” She can be reached at sinaraspeaks@earthlink.com or www.sinaraspeaks.com.