Reverse meeting is a Toastmasters meeting that has the agenda upside down.
If you’ve seen Christopher Nolan’s movie Tenet, where the Protagonist moves in time backwards, you have an idea. Even though, don’t worry, you don’t need to speak backwards - we don’t go that far (at least, not in the Reverse Meetings I participated in).
The big idea of the Reverse Meeting is to switch the cause and effect of various meeting roles.
For example, in a standard meeting, a speaker delivers a speech and then her evaluator comments on what happened in the speech, and provides suggestions. To most people, this sounds natural.
In a Reverse Meeting (where the agenda is upside down), the evaluator comes to the stage BEFORE the speaker, and comments on what happened in the speech, and provides suggestions. To make it “work,” the speaker then needs to do what the evaluator said she did 😵💫🤔😏 To most people, this sounds absurd - but because of that, it often is also hilarious.
There are two things to consider when you have a role in the meeting:
When giving hints to others, keep in mind the following:
1️⃣ Entertainment Factor
Above all, the reverse meeting should be fun. For example, the person reporting the use of the “Word of the Day” almost at the beginning of the meeting, and everyone should “follow” what they said.
It tends to be a bit more fun, if the report includes something that does not usually happen in a meeting.
2️⃣ ”Doability” Factor
While keeping the Entertainment Factor in mind, it’s also good to think of what is plausible. If the report includes something like: “Marek used the Word of the Day 1643 times,” it would be hard to make it a reality. This was an obvious exaggeration, but my hint is: Think of whether it is realistic for the speakers to follow the comments you give in your report.
Even though the person doing the Word of the Day is almost at the top of the upside down agenda - the General Evaluator comes before. So the Word of the Day receives hints from the General Evaluator.
To make it work, 2 things help:
1️⃣ Have notes on all the hints to share with the speakers (you can do that by looking at the meeting agenda the day before and writing notes in advance). Because you will receive “additional instruction” about what to do during the meeting, it’s best to have “well prepared” everything that you can prepare in advance.
2️⃣ Take notes during the evaluation (for the Word of the Day it is the General Evaluator, but also the Timer), and bring those notes to the stage to “make everything happen.”