Turn Up the Engagement

Your email dings. A meeting invitation has just arrived and your heart sinks into your stomach. There goes another hour of your life, stuck listening to your boss blather on about… does it even matter? You’ll show up, sit down, and check out. 

As hard as that was to read, if you’re leading boring meetings for your team, that’s exactly what your employees are thinking every time a calendar invite appears. They know they have to be there physically, but mentally? 

Good luck. 

Are you ready to turn up the engagement on your meetings? If so, it’s time to create an environment of active learning in your business and at your events. 

What is Active Learning?

You’ve been in classes, meetings, and events where someone talks at you for 25-90 minutes. You are passively receiving information, and frankly, you are bored! This doesn’t require thought, creativity, or problem-solving skills, which means it probably doesn’t get your full attention. Once you check out (even partly), it’s game on. Now, you’re looking at your email, scrolling through sports scores, or texting with someone else in the meeting who is just as disengaged as you. You are involved (but not engaged) in passive listening, a one-way transmission of knowledge that provides minimal retainment of information. According to The Learning Pyramid, research shows that after a lecture, attendees only retain 5% of the knowledge. Five percent! 

Active learning, on the other hand, is a process whereby learners are involved in activities that require them to think, get involved, solve problems, and interact with you and other learners. This type of learning allows attendees to retain between 50% and 90% of the information they receive. As a leader, would you rather your team members remember 5% of what you’ve told them, or 90% of what you’ve told them? 

How Do You Incorporate Active Learning into Your Meetings and Events?

In my last article, Learn Like a Rockstar, I talked about Experiential Learning Theory, how employees learn better when they are engaging in real-world tasks, or getting on-the-job training. Experiential Learning is a type of Active Learning, however, it’s not your only option. 

Take a look at the different ways you can incorporate active learning into your next meeting or event:

1. Group discussions. When you engage your team in a discussion rather than a one-sided talk, they are more involved, more invested, and their brain is in an active learning state. To inspire group conversations, consider using the “Think, Pair, and Share” method. Once you’ve presented a concept, ask a question of the attendees. Have them think about their answer, then pair up with a neighbor and discuss their answers together. Finally, ask them to share what they and their partner came up with. 

This type of learning falls around the 50% retention rate. Much better than lectures or reading, but we can do even better.

1. Simulations or Role-Playing. By acting our real-world scenarios, learners are applying their newly gotten knowledge. This can work with communication training, sales, customer service, crisis management, etc. Just about anything you need to teach, can have a role-playing component attached to it. This “practicing by doing” leads to 75% retention. Getting even better… but there’s a best.
2. Peer Teaching – The act of teaching a concept to someone else brings retention all the way up to 90%. Once you’ve taught a concept, pair off your employees into groups of 2 or more and have them take turns teaching that same concept to one another. They can incorporate their own experience in the form of stories, and practice explaining the concept in different ways to increase understanding. 

No matter what type of speaking I do, I’m always incorporating elements of active learning for my attendees. Keynote attendees receive drumsticks so they can drum along, and team-building workshop participants are grouped into “bands” where they put on a performance for the other participants. This type of involvement creates energy and excitement and provides a memorable experience with high retention rates.

Conclusion

Meetings may be essential. Boring meetings, however, are not. As a leader, it’s time to turn up the engagement on your meetings and create an event your employees are excited to participate in.

To learn more about rockstar leadership, visit https://marvellessmark.com/.