1. With a warm-up to energise and engage ahead of your hui content
This doesn’t have to be complicated – Post-it notes are your friend here!
Try one of these ideas at your next meeting:
- Wellbeing check-in: Ask your meeting participants to write down a word for where they are at today. Ask them to share with the person next to you and hear about how they are doing.
- The topic for your meeting – give people a starter e.g. Health and safety matters to me because…. and they complete the sentence on their post it. Put them all up on the wall, revisit them at the end of your meeting. A great way to bring home the purpose or bigger picture of your meeting’s content.
- Ask them all to write one question or comment about today’s meeting content on a post-it note – collate these and address them at the end of the meeting, or the next meeting. Sometimes writing a question down anonymously is easier for participants than speaking in front of a group.
- If you’ve got complex technical vocabulary or acronyms in your meeting that are key for understanding, think about pulling out a couple of words to check comprehension before you launch into the details. Prepare a couple of post-it notes with your words on them and ask small groups to discuss the meaning ahead of your presentation.
- Takeaways – as your wrap up your meeting, ask participants to write a learning takeaway from the session and briefly share it with the person next to them, or as they leave the meeting. Keep it quick and pacy.
2. With a quote, image or whakatauki to inspire or themed around your meeting
This helps people engage and brings to the front of their awareness what they already know. Think of it as priming the brain to be ready for incoming new information.
3. With a karakia
With a karakia. Karakia to open meetings can bring everyone present and together and as this practical guide from Tūtira Mai notes, it calms the mind and settles the wairua. When we’re calm and centred, we’re ready to receive and absorb new information.
