Engage Your Meeting Participants: Visualize Your Agenda!

Visuals add value to meetings in so many ways. They:

• Bring clarity and deepen understanding
• Help participants see what they said
• Can serve as an ongoing change management tool

All of this increases engagement and the value of the time and energy invested in meeting.

Here are the resources I used and a quick case study I wrote of how I recently visualized a full-day agenda and the customized templates I created to support breakthrough conversations.

• Welcome! Set the tone by presenting the purpose of the meeting. Optional: OARRS chart from The Grove [https://grovetools-inc.com/collections/all/products/graphic-guides-complete]
• Let’s Celebrate! https://main.learning-templates.com/2022/09/20/start-your-meetings-with-a-celebration/
• Start with “Why” based on Simon Sinek’s book. https://simonsinek.com/books/start-with-why/
• Let’s SOAR: https://main.learning-templates.com/event/strategic-conversation-bootcamp-two-2-5-hour-virtual-sessions/
• Time to commit! But before we do, reflecting on the SOAR exercise, let’s commit to our aspirations. Doing so infuses more life into the world we want to create and helps guide us on next steps—which can be captured in a Who/What/When format.

Purpose:

Use visuals to support a team who is tasked with better understanding their “Why” and using it as criteria to align their efforts.

Process:

• Meet with the client to understand their Desired Outcomes.
• Provide a visual mock-up that supports their agenda.
• Gather the necesssary materials to support the facilitated process.
• At the meeting, use the visual templates to guide the conversation. Advanced: Have the templates in the back of your head as you capture the conversation.
• Followup: Photograph or scan the finished charts and provide them to the customer with supporting narrative so they can continue to use the artifact(s) as a change management tool.

Payoff:

Every agenda item was supported using visuals—keeping participants engaged and illustrating that their ideas were heard. The artifact can serve as a foundation from which to make decisions and change.

What Next Step Might You Take?

New to bringing visuals into your meeting? Come check out our free Sneak Peek into Appreciative Inquiry + Visuals = Meeting Design on Wednesday, March 1, 2023. Sign up for free here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUrf-itrD0sH9UZXmO2mdYgtHbrCXMm6fhI

You are invited to learn more at an upcoming Appreciative Inquiry + Visuals = Meeting Design, a 4-session course where we dive deep into making your next meeting visual. Learn more here.

Heather Leavitt Martinez uses Appreciative Inquiry in all of her work—from meeting approach design, facilitating and coaching, to living out the principles in her everyday life. She teaches relevant, timely techniques to apply AI to tech hosting at www.TechHostAcademy.com and combines it with visuals in her course: “AI + Visuals: Meeting Approach Design” at the Center of Appreciative Inquiry.