What is a Leadership Summit?
The leadership summit is a strategic event that brings together top executives, including CEOs, directors, business owners, senior managers, subject matter experts, and aspiring leaders, to discuss industry best practices, trends, and innovations, while expanding their professional networks.
These summits are more than just an event; they provide a platform for business leaders to connect and engage with other corporate leaders, as well as a private space for candid discussions about real-world challenges, such as team management, adapting to new trends, and building a positive work environment.
15 Creative Leadership Summit Ideas to Brighten Up Your Meeting
1) Invite Guest Speakers
Invite a guest speaker who brings a new voice, approach, and perspective to your leadership summit meetings. This not only enriches the discussions, but also inspires attendees. Guest speakers often share their personal stories of failure and success to motivate guests through relatable experiences.
When inviting a guest speaker for leadership conferences, consider inviting a subject matter expert, entrepreneurs, the founders of innovative startups, or the CEOs of successful companies in your field.
You can also invite a reputed motivational speaker, keynote speaker, or celebrity speaker to add a touch of glamour to your program.
2) Incorporate Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR)
Leverage Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR) technology to give your summit participants a memorable and immersive experience. Virtual Reality (VR) takes viewers into a virtual world, which promises an incredible event experience. Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that inserts computer-generated images & sounds and creates an interactive real-world environment.
With VR, you can take attendees on a 3D virtual tour and create a personalized experience. With AR, you can display audience questions in real-time and make a more engaging and interactive Q&A session.
3) Host the Summit in the Park
Holding a leadership meeting in the lap of nature is an awesome idea, and a park brimming with greenery is a great location. Since the park offers natural beauty and ample space with grass, your event will be more memorable than a typical indoor venue. The open space, the greenery, and nature can refresh your attendees’ minds and spark creative exchanges.
When choosing a park, check out amenities like sufficient seating places, ample parking, restrooms, a cafe, and more. Also, ensure that there is public transportation available.
4) Conducts Team-Building Activities
In order to boost communication and enhance interaction among participants, conduct various team-bonding activities such as Two Truths and a Lie, Human Knot, Escape Rooms, and more.
With team-building exercises, attendees will be able to work together on shared challenges, which will boost cooperation and build a stronger bond among them. Fun and interactive games will help energize leaders, making the summit more engaging and memorable.
5) Choose a Theme for the Summit
Since the purpose of each leadership summit is distinct, spice up each event with a creative theme. The theme serves as the core concept that unifies every aspect of an event. It directly supports the main goal of the event, reinforces its core message among the audience, and ties everyone to it.
In order to make your leadership summit unique, choose a creative theme that not only aligns with your event’s purpose but also makes the conference stand out.
You can choose various creative themes, including era themes to take attendees back in time, like “Roaring 20s”, Fabulous 50s or Disco 70s”, movie themes like “Harry Potter”, “Star Wars”, “Game of Thrones”, “Disney”, or “Superheroes”, and more.
6) Incorporate Thrilling Games
Incorporating thrilling games is a great way to elevate the energy and engagement at your summit. You can allow attendees to play high-energy games like “escape room”, “scavenger hunt”, “egg drop”, “murder mysteries”, “balloon burst”, etc.
These games not only give a thrilling gaming experience but also create unforgettable memories for them. Furthermore, such games assist participants in developing skills such as strategic thinking, communication, problem solving, adaptability & resilience, and stress management, all of which are required to better perform leadership roles.
7) Set up a Photo Booth
A photo booth is a fantastic idea to naturally boost engagement at your leadership event. It will not only enhance your attendees’ mood but also engage them in shared fun. Aspiring leaders can engage in creative photo shoots with top-level executives, sharing props and creating a memory to take home.
One standout benefit of setting up a photo booth is that it gives you a great branding opportunity. You can customize the booth with your company brand logo, color, and message to reinforce your company identity throughout the event. A photo booth provides attendees a unique opportunity to unwind and capture sweet memories with fellow participants in a fun way.
8) Movie Guessing Session
It is a popular and entertaining way to engage audiences at an event. This game usually involves giving clues about a movie and asking participants to guess which movie it is. This activity will truly make your next leadership conference stand out. You can divide participants into teams and give each team the same duration of time to guess the movie name. Once all rounds end, you will declare the team that scores the most points the winner.
9) Hold an Awards Ceremony
Hold an awards ceremony to recognize and reward leaders for their contributions. This will not only motivate them, but also others to strive for great achievement. You can offer various awards to boost their morale, such as the emerging leader award, best team leading award, and more.
By holding an awards session, you create a culture that values and recognizes leadership, which can help you attract potential talent to your organization that will take your business forward in the future.
10) Pre-event Networking Session
It is an amazing idea to allow participants to network prior to the summit. Attendees at a leadership conference often come to expand their network, gain industry insights, and learn the latest practices in their field.
In such cases, if you give your participants an opportunity to interact, connect, and unwind before the event, their excitement will skyrocket. Early networking can really help build camaraderie and a sense of community among participants, even before the official program begins.
11) Guessing Game
If you want to inject some excitement into your summit, include a guessing game. This idea will work as an icebreaker activity and encourage & entertain participants.
You can ask attendees to guess fun facts about top leaders who you have invited to your summit, like “We have a leader who is a gym buff? Guess who?”.
You can also display an image featuring half of a leader’s face and ask attendees to identify the leader. This guessing game will really add a lot of fun to your leadership summit.
12) Casual Q&A Session
Schedule a casual Q&A session in order to facilitate a more open discussion. Attendees might be hesitant to ask direct questions to top executives, but having a dedicated Q&A session allows attendees to ask leaders whatever they want.
Attendees can present the challenges they are currently facing or understand from fellow leaders how they overcame the challenges they faced in their careers. This fosters a two-way dialogue at your summit and builds a relaxed and transparent event environment.
13) Breakout Session
Your leadership summit is incomplete without a breakout session. It is a highly engaging activity that not only boosts the attendee interaction but also makes conversations richer. Through breakout rooms, you can divide participants into smaller groups so they can have more detailed discussions about the summit topics.
For example, if your leadership topic is on “AI in marketing”, using breakout rooms, your participants can have more in-depth conversations about it. Everyone will get an opportunity to voice their opinion and brainstorm ideas, as well as have a deep conversation about using AI tools in daily work.
14) Cocktail Hour
Allow your summit participants to mingle, indulge in a delicious meal, enjoy a drink together, and socialize in an entertaining way. Offer both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks so people can choose whatever they want.
Through cocktail hour, aspiring leaders can get the opportunity to talk, laugh, and share informal and fun moments with senior executive leaders. A cocktail hour will help build camaraderie among leaders, and your summit will remain at the top of their minds.
15) Open Mic Session
It might be a great idea to hold an “open mic” session at your next leadership meeting. Everyone will get an opportunity to share their talents, demonstrate their skills, and show off their other expertise to other participants.
An open mic session in your leadership conference helps attendees get to know one another outside of their professional roles and discover fun aspects about them. Whether it is singing, miming, comedy, dance, or magic, every leader gets the opportunity to engage their peers in a unique and fun manner.
Final Thoughts
Engaging and entertaining participants at a leadership summit is not challenging, but it’s not particularly easy either. Just providing attendees with what they came for isn’t enough to keep them interested and engaged throughout the event. You need to incorporate fun, engaging activities and entertainment into your session.
The list of ideas covered in this article will not only attract participants but will also make the summit extremely appealing and interactive. From the guest speakers’ session, team-building activities, and photo booth to the award ceremony, pre-networking session, and cocktail hour, each idea will make your leadership meeting fun, dynamic, engaging, and memorable for your attendees.
FAQs
To promote collaboration at leadership gatherings, consider the following:
- Prioritize and ensure ample networking opportunities
- Include a variety of team-building sessions
- interactive breakout sessions where participants can communicate and engage with one another.
Participants can gain a range of benefits from attending leadership summits, like:
- Improving their leadership skills
- Receiving updates on the latest industry trends & emerging tools
- Gaining the opportunity to network with industry leaders, mentors, and business owners from diverse backgrounds and sectors which can lead to future job opportunities.
- Understanding the success stories of leaders can inspire and motivate them to strive for their own achievements.
- Getting the opportunity to learn directly from top experts, often through keynote speeches, panel discussions, and personal interactions.
