Its time for more self reflection questions! Today we are going to consider activities that you’ve experienced.

I’ve started mentioning Toastmasters in the last few posts, but today I want to do a MAJOR plug for this incredible life changing organization. I joined Toastmasters in 2005 when I was a very shy quiet software engineer. I was too shy to even speak up in design sessions with my team.

As I continue in the engagement series I now will share my favorite go to activities. Most of these work for both broadcast and working session meeting types. I’ve used all of these to spice up my Toastmasters District Council meetings. Audiences love these types of activities because it brings in variety. Many of these allow their voices to be heard in some way.

I run a big meeting for Toastmasters District 57 each month called an District Executive Council Meeting. We have about 60ish folks every meeting. The meeting is 2 hours long. It could be super boring, but instead I hear constant feedback that my meetings are awesome. This post gives tips on how to use delegation to increase engagement.

The engagement series continues with how to increase engagement in your meetings. This post looks at how ownership can make your meeting more engaging.

On Sunday I realized that I have an addiction to “trying.” I became aware of my addiction to “try” when I listened to David Asprey’s new book Fast this Way. He was mentioning different kinds of fasts from protein to dopamine, then he suggested a fast from the word “try.”

This post shares how I refresh my energy. I like to call the refreshers collectively as my Fountainhead. I share those refreshers that help me keep my energy flowing.

Today’s self reflection questions are about meeting tone.

Setting the tone is the first step to create an engaging meeting. This post looks at some methods to set the tone to get your attendees to bring their best selves to the meeting.

As I entered into this series, I thought that there were two kinds of people: talkative folks who weren’t shy about engaging in the meeting discussions. And other folks who were naturally quiet and introverted. But instead what I found was shocking. In this post, I share my findings and introduce a new series on engagement.

I kick off my engagement series with a poll. Please respond on how you engage in a meeting.

Attention must be paid and it costs dearly. How do we get meeting attendees to actually pay attention in a meeting? Let’s step back and think about what you like paying for. This post gives the three ways to get your attendees to pay attention in your next meeting

This post tackles the critical question that I personally struggle with each day: The tension between accepting reality vs making change. I know its a controversial topic and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Post your comments where you found this post on either LinkedIN or Facebook.

Today I want to share with you my office setup. I have a special offer for you at the end of this post.

Principles for my design:

• Comfortable

• Healthy and energy

• Professional

Have you ever come to the end of a week and wondered why you didn’t get all the work done you wanted to? If so, it might be time to review your weekly calendar to check if you have too many meetings on it!

Go through next week’s calendar and ask yourself the following questions.

One on ones are always challenging, but they get more difficult when you are remote. One on one meetings are done with colleagues, managers, direct reports, partners, customers, skip level, etc. I will share a few best practices for how to make them more effective online.

This post continues my series on Human Centered Online Meetings. The Working Session online meeting can go very poorly if not done right. Working Sessions create a document such as a project plan or technical design. This post shares the best practices that I’ve discovered to run this online meeting type in a human centered way.

This post shares best practices for running an online broadcast meeting. By broadcast I mean that there are many people in the audience and only a few presenters. Here are some examples:

Conferences

All-hands

Training

Lectures

Today I cover the extremely basic basics of how to run an online meeting. If this is too boring for you then share in the comments on my post on either LinkedIn of FB what pro tips you have.

This week’s posts will give tips on how to run human centered online meetings.

You can use these tips until the robots take over. At that time you can switch to my other blog called “Meeting Tips for Robots.”