Engaging people in meaningful discussion in your meetings, retreats, Town Halls or offsites isn’t easy. One of the biggest challenges is gaining, and then keeping people’s attention long enough to have a useful dialogue and build the commitment you need to make change happen.

Think back to some of the meetings you’ve attended. Remember the one where you were so bored your greatest creative stretch was figuring out how to yawn without someone noticing? How about that one where you were barraged by speakers and PowerPoint slides that you started to figure out how to work your eye contact so you could check your email and look like you were engaged in your Zoom session at the same time? Or do you remember the strategic offsite you went to where you worked really hard but felt like you had been hit by a truck at the end of the day, and struggled to remember what you talked about before lunch?

My philosophy when I design and deliver sessions for my clients is that there is brilliance in the room. It’s crucial to create an environment and agenda where we can tap into the hearts and minds of all participants, especially now that we are navigating in-person, virtual and hybrid work environments.

Priya Parker, the author of The Art of Gathering, says that connection isn’t something that just happens on its own. She urges people to “decide why you are really gathering”, whether it’s a leadership retreat, a milestone birthday celebration or a wedding. “What is the need in this community now, and then design the social infrastructure to support that need,” she urges.

Engaging experiences are designed around energy, not just content. When you engage people, you draw forth their insights, creativity, and commitment to taking action.

Here are my 3 top tips for making your next meeting or event powerful and impactful. These strategies will work, whether you’re planning a team meeting for a handful of people, or a conference for thousands.

1. Build Open Connection Space into Your Agenda

While it’s important to make use of the time you have, be careful not to overplan each minute of the agenda. Rather than operate on autopilot and doing meetings as they’ve always been done, consider the lessons learned through the pandemic. What worked well and be intentional about how you can bring that forward as people return to the office. How you design the interactions people can have is every bit as important, if not more so, than just plowing through the content of the agenda.

Anchor your discussions in the context of WHY this issue matters, and ensure everyone has the opportunity to voice their view about that. If people aren’t bought in on why change may be needed, any potential solutions are likely to falter or fail when it comes to implementation.

When designing your meeting or event, be aware that there are natural peaks and valleys in the group’s energy. You’ll get the most attention and engagement at the beginning of your event, but expect it to drop after a meal or towards the end of the day. Those can be good times to incorporate small group or buddy sharing, or to get folks involved in some kind of kinaesthetic activity like putting their ideas on sticky notes on a wall or completing a pre-designed graphic template together.

2. Create an Environment for Great Ideas and Discussion

Create the environment for people to have meaningful dialogue and experiences with one another. With only 20% of employees reporting that they feel actively engaged in their work, talking at them longer won’t help. Engaging in conversations, developing shared values and experiences, and fostering collaboration and better relationships goes a long way towards helping organizations achieve the outcomes they want. From using ice-breaker exercises so people get to know one another to how you communicate with participants before and after the event, the more you can create an experience, the better your event will be. In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

Create a space that supports your work – whether physical or virtual. The opportunity to connect people to the purpose of your meeting and to each other starts before the actual meeting itself. Consider how you invite them. You could send out an email, but perhaps a short personal video included in that might offer an opportunity for impact. What kind of preparation or pre-work can you give to help “prime the pump” so they are ready to participate and excited to do so? According to Priya Parker, “90% of success of what happens in the room takes place before anyone physically enters the room.”

3. Plan for the “What’s Next?”

I believe that information may be interesting, but without action, it’s pretty useless. How you translate the decisions and momentum from your gathering into tangible action is part of the “Transfer” stage of my COUNT roadmap, which I discuss in my award-winning book, Lead Conversations that Count: How Busy Managers Run Great Meetings.”

Reverse-engineer the agenda and participant preparation to the outcomes you want at the end of the day. What needs to be different the day after your meeting or event as a result? What action do you want folks to take? Graphic recordings of the discussions are great not just for capturing the event, but also for fostering ongoing dialogue after the event and to help with implementation.

If you want more frameworks and tips on how to improve engagement and connection in your meetings, you can check out my book, Lead Conversations that Count: How Busy Managers Run Great Meetings.