How to Conduct a Productive Meeting (and Make it Engaging!)

Gathering face-to-face at an offsite location allows your team to gain a new perspective that inspires fresh thinking while building stronger bonds. To get the most out of this effort, we’re sharing insights on how to increase productivity and deliver an engaging attendee experience for a win-win situation.

Think: Location, Location, Location
As you search for the best places for offsite meetings, it’s important to first consider geography. You want a location that is easily accessible by car or plane – after all, travel time only subtracts from productivity. Just 20 minutes from Dulles International Airport, Lansdowne Resort is a direct flight or convenient drive from major metropolitan areas across the country. Our dedicated wing of meeting spaces offers a distraction-free environment to fulfill your group’s exacting needs and maintain full focus on your objectives.

Design a Grand Plan
Leading up to your meeting, it’s critical to clearly define your objectives, set an agenda and identify any attendee pre-work required. Then, communicate each of these items in a timely manner so your team is fully informed and prepared to hit the ground running.

Go All In
Sequestering your team in a meeting room listening to presentations for hours on end does not make them more productive. Attention wanes. Concentration fades. And effectiveness dramatically drops off. To keep your attendees motivated and energy levels up, you need to fuel their minds and bodies. Be sure to schedule regular stretching sessions (preferably outside!) as well as nutritional refreshment breaks for every couple hours of meetings. And, to promote greater bonds, you can employ engaging team building activities. Lansdowne Resort is a proven leader in facilitating experiences that foster active listening, critical thinking, effective communication, dynamic collaboration, decision making and problem solving. Email us to request our comprehensive Team Building Guide.

Collaborate & Innovate
Another tactic to break up the tedium of meetings is to build in strategic breakout sessions. This allows smaller groups to engage in deeper discussions about the subject matter and work together to develop new ideas and solutions. You may just be amazed by what comes to the fore.

Stay on Track
Remember that agenda you carefully curated when designing your grand plan? Throughout the meeting, you need to ensure your group sticks to it. Sometimes, dominant personalities can veer discussions off on tangents – this is acceptable if it continues on a trajectory toward your meeting objective. If it doesn’t, make sure to redirect everyone’s efforts in a constructive way.

Get it All Down
We recommend appointing your most detail-oriented colleague to be the official meeting note-taker. And, if you use flip-charts or other paper-based tools for breakout sessions, be sure to save them all as a backup. This way, no details fall through the cracks.

Keep It Moving
After the meeting wraps, you’ll want to compile all notes to highlight big ideas, key decisions and action items into an easy-to-read report to share with all attendees. Make sure to assign action items to specific team members, along with achievable deadlines.

Analyze & Refine
Develop a survey to collect pertinent feedback from attendees on the experience. You’ll use this to measure effectiveness and engagement levels – and determine ways to make improvements for your next meeting.

Now that you’ve gained key insights on how to conduct a productive meeting, you’re ready for venue selection. Purpose-built to help groups discover the joy of lifelong learning, our conveniently located property delivers the transformative moments that advance productivity and progress. We’re proud to be the home of successful offsite meetings in Northern Virginia, while delivering the AAA Four-Diamond accommodations attendees appreciate. Our team is ready to collaborate with you to ensure your next gathering is a triumph.