Bring meetings, meals, and shared experiences together so your team can focus on what matters: connecting.
The room is full. The presentation is underway. And somewhere behind an open laptop, an attendee is answering an email that probably could have waited.
They made the trip. Whether they’re getting the value from it is another question.
Shelley Gutta knows how easily that happens. At a recent conference, she brought her laptop with good intentions: handle a few tasks between sessions, stay caught up, keep work moving.
Then she caught herself.
“The reason I was there was right in front of me,” she says.
The next day, she left the laptop behind. She focused on the people around her and had a much better meeting experience.
For planners, her story raises a useful question: How much of your agenda helps people be present, and how much leaves them pulled toward something else?
The inbox has a seat at every meeting
Emails, phone calls, texts, unfinished projects. Attendees arrive with more than luggage.
“We are so connected,” Shelley says. “If people are calling you or emailing you or texting you, they expect an immediate response.”
That expectation doesn’t disappear when someone puts on a name badge. Even a quick reply can turn into several minutes of work, followed by the effort of figuring out what they missed.
The cost goes beyond a missed slide. It might be an introduction that never happens, a conversation that gets cut short, or an idea someone never contributes because their attention is elsewhere.
Shelley says, “Someone’s paying money for me to be here. Things are expensive. I need to get the most out of it.”
Planners can help by making room for predictable email and phone breaks. Communicate those windows ahead of time so attendees can set expectations with their teams. A realistic check-in opportunity can make it easier to close the laptop during moments that deserve full attention.
A full agenda doesn’t guarantee connection
People can spend an entire day in the same room and barely get to know one another.
Shelley points to seating as one example. Classroom seating tends to limit conversation to the people immediately beside you. Crescent rounds create opportunities to talk with a small group. Neither arrangement automatically connects attendees with everyone else.
That makes the time around the sessions especially valuable.
“If you’re not going to a planned breakfast or a networking event, you’re missing all of those other people that are in the room,” she says.
Yet those gatherings are easy to treat as optional extras. Breakfast becomes something to grab on the way in. An evening event becomes the first thing someone skips to catch up on work.
“Just meeting isn’t enough,” Shelley says. “You need those organic connections with people.”
Give those connections a clear place in the agenda. A shared breakfast, a small-group activity, or an unhurried meal gives people a reason to stay together and a setting where conversation can develop.
The balance matters: schedule the opportunity, then leave enough breathing room for people to use it.
Every logistical decision competes for attention
An attendee can be physically present while mentally working through the evening.
Where should we eat? Do we need a reservation? How long will it take to get there? Who’s arranging transportation?
“When you’re supposed to be connected, you’re not sitting there planning for what comes next,” Shelley says. “You’re actually focused on what’s happening in the now.”
Keeping meetings, meals, and activities in one place can reduce those competing decisions. Attendees know where they’re going and what happens next. Planners have fewer transitions to coordinate.
That convenience is worth considering when selecting a venue. Alongside room capacities and meeting space, ask how the full day will work:
- Can attendees move easily between sessions, meals, and activities?
- Will the group have comfortable places to continue conversations?
- How much transportation or individual planning does the agenda require?
- Are the next steps clear enough that attendees can stop thinking about them?
A well-planned transition gives people more time to finish a conversation instead of rushing away to solve logistics.
The payoff follows people back to work
Shelley saw the difference with a leadership team whose gathering included breakfast, meetings, golf, and sporting clays.
The shared experiences gave colleagues more time together across different settings. Afterward, the team told her the benefits carried into their everyday work.
“They also had stronger relationships and connections with one another that carried on into their day-to-day,” she says.
One practical result: it became easier to pick up the phone and talk with a colleague.
That’s a useful outcome to plan toward. Beyond asking whether attendees enjoyed an activity, consider what it helped them do. Did they meet someone outside their usual circle? Did they have a conversation they’d been putting off? Find common ground with a colleague?
Those are also useful questions for the post-event survey. They can help reveal whether the gathering created relationships people will continue using.
Proximity only gets you so far
Shelley experienced this closer to home, too.
During a team outing to a corn maze, she learned more about a colleague’s upcoming wedding, including her concerns about winter weather at a ski resort.
They had worked together for a year. When Shelley was in the office, they sat about a cubicle apart. Still, the outing created space for a conversation that hadn’t happened during the workday.
“We spend time together, but we don’t spend networking quality time getting to know one another,” she says.
Planners don’t have to script those personal moments. They can create the conditions for them: time together, an approachable activity, and enough freedom for conversation to wander beyond the next deadline.
Plan for the attention you want to earn
Attendance is the starting point. The value comes from what people notice, contribute, and carry home.
Shelley’s laptop realization offers a practical lens for reviewing an agenda: What might attendees miss while they’re busy keeping up with everything else?
Build in time to handle everyday demands. Make shared meals and activities purposeful. Reduce unnecessary logistics. Protect the space between sessions where a quick introduction can become a meaningful conversation.
The goal is to give people the opportunity to look up and recognize why they came.
Give your next meeting room to connect
At Stonewall Resort, your team can move from productive sessions to shared meals and outdoor activities, with fewer logistics competing for their attention.
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