Multiple Intelligence is by no means applicable only to formal mentor training and coaching sessions or workshops. In this article I talk about how to tap "The 8 Kinds of Smart" in leading a meeting to insure that you capture everyone's attention and you get them involved in your presentation.
LEADING A MEETING
Here are some strategies you can include to "juice up" any meeting you have to lead. The over-arching key is to make sure that there is lots of variety during the meeting.
As people come into the meeting have instrumental music playing to set the mood for the kind of meeting it is.
For example, if people are going to need to stretch themselves and "think out side the box" play music that is a bit unusual and out of the ordinary. If it's a meeting where you'll be dealing with a lot of controversial issues, use classical music to help people relax.
2. Don't allow people to just sit around and talk the issues to death. Start by building the agenda using a "mind map". Then go around the group and have each person say what his or her personal goals are for the meeting. Record these on another mind map.
3. When there is information to be presented and discussed, break the group into partners or small teams and use a "jigsaw" strategy where you divide the information up have different teams or partners study their part of the information.
Then have them create an outline of the key points of the information they studied.
Finally, have them share their part of the information with the larger group through verbal presentations.
4. Discuss the presentation by asking questions which tap The 8 Kinds of Smart; such as, "What did you see inside your head?" "What was your emotional response?" "What did you want to do?" "Who do you want to talk to about this?" or "What item(s) do you feel you need more time to think about?"
5. Whenever possible during the meeting, have people illustrate their ideas through physical demonstration, role playing, or simply find excuses to get people up out of the chairs moving every twenty minutes or so.
6. Make use of different kinds of visual representation throughout the meeting so people can see what is being discussed.
This can include such things a graphs, flow charts, visualization, diagrams, pictures, PowerPoint slides, videos, guided imagery, and so on.
7. At the conclusion of the meeting design a "multimodal" way to represent the results of the meeting using some of the Multiple Intelligence SmartStrategies.
I've often had people create three different ways to show their understanding of the results of the meeting such as writing in a journal, creating a visual symbol of what was accomplished, and giving the meeting a title of a well-known song.
When you lead meetings making sure to incorporate all of the multiple intelligences, not only will you tap the variety of ways people learn, understand, and process information, I promise you'll put an end to boring meetings forever and you'll have them begging for more!