The key to making your meetings more productive is a punctuation mark.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Pop Quiz:

1. How many meetings are held every day?
2. What percentage of those meetings are considered productive?
3. How many articles have you read with tips to make your meetings more engaging and impactful?
4. What simple shift in how you structure your meeting agendas could unlock a world of potential?
5. Have you ever considered reframing your agenda items as thought-provoking questions?
6. Are you ready to discover how this subtle change can revolutionize your meeting dynamics and lead to more productive outcomes?

Here are five reasons why you should rewrite your meeting agenda as questions:

1. Stimulate Curiosity for Active Engagement

Conventional agendas fall short of capturing attention and driving active participation. However, questions trigger curiosity, inviting individuals to explore. Curiosity fuels engagement and facilitates robust conversations. By embracing question-based agendas, participants are given more clarity around purpose and outcomes of meetings, which could lead to more active engagement.

2. Nurture Critical Thinking and Cognitive Flexibility

Reframing agenda items into questions encourages attendees to think critically. Questions promote cognitive flexibility — an individual’s ability to adapt their thinking to different scenarios. Psychologically speaking, this leads to improved problem-solving skills as individuals assess varied perspectives and multifaceted solutions, eventually fostering creative thinking and adaptability.

3. Facilitate Inclusive Dialogue and Diverse Perspectives

Gathering people for meetings, by its very nature, infers a desire to engage diverse viewpoints to foster richer discussions that lead to better solutions. By framing meeting agendas as questions, an inclusive environment is cultivated. Questions set the stage for participants to share their perspectives and welcome the perspectives of others, creating a space where diverse cognitive approaches intersect. This diversity of thought can facilitate deeper understanding and innovative problem-solving.

4. Evoke Exploration and Enhance Understanding

Question-based agendas can also help participants bridge the “curiosity gap”. Human brains are wired to seek resolution for cognitive dissonance — information gaps that emerge from questions. Questions invites participants to explore, research, and contribute actively. As a result, meetings become experiential learning opportunities, enriching participants’ knowledge and understanding.

5. Cultivate Ownership and Positive Emotions

Psychological research emphasizes the positive impact of ownership on motivation and emotional well-being. Constructing agenda items as questions encourages participants to take ownership of the discussion and outcomes. Encouraging a sense of ownership enhances participants’ feelings of responsibility, resulting in more thoughtful contributions, increased engagement, and ultimately, positive emotions associated with active involvement.

Here is a typical meeting agenda:

1. Project Updates
2. Budget Review
3. Marketing Strategy
4. Next Steps

Here is that same agenda reframed as a questions:

1. What collaboration strategies can be employed to enhance cross-functional communication during project updates?
2. How might we address emerging challenges within the scope of project updates?
3. What innovative cost-saving measures can we explore without compromising the project’s overall goals?
4. How might we address unexpected budget fluctuations demand a closer examination?
5. How might we leverage our marketing strategy to resonate with a broader target audience?
6. What untapped market segments should our marketing strategy should consider targeting for future growth?
7. What changes are necessary to our project plan?

Reframing the agenda to questions aims to immediately change participant’s perception from passive to active participation in the conversation, welcomes their ideas and clarifies expected outcomes.

Look at the next meeting you are hosting. What if you rewrote your meeting agenda as questions? What do you think might happen?

Curiously yours, Garett