Spicing Up the All-Hands Meeting

The Leadership Test Kitchen is a newsletter where I share the ingredients behind leading and growing successful companies. Some editions feature practical frameworks from CEOs who’ve mastered challenges in strategy, culture, and growth. Others share the lessons I’ve learned firsthand as a CEO, or insights I’ve gained from my work with other executives.

This one comes from the front lines. If you’re bored with your next All-Hands Meeting, you can only imagine what your employees think. Routine is ok, but not if it gets in the way of the message.

Recently, my work with local business leaders led me, inadvertently, down the path of storytelling and effective presentations. I intended to focus on 2026 planning. Instead, communicating 2026 plans took the main stage. Several leaders felt their story just wasn’t getting across, and engagement was lower than they wanted. A few questions in, the conversation quickly turned to the story arc, delivery, and audience engagement.

I’m not a trained communications consultant, but I have spent a lot of time thinking and experimenting on how I’m conveying what’s on the company’s menu for the year, or how the meal is being experienced by an employee or customer. And I admit that I geek out on it. Here are some tips that I’ve passed along:

First Course – Set the Table

• You Have 5 Minutes At Most to Get Your Point Across. Don’t make the audience work for it. Clearly state the purpose of the meeting and what you want them to know. Since it’s 5 minutes or less, you get brownie points for clarity and speed.

  
  

• Messages Work Best in 3’s: I learned early in my career that messages are delivered in threes (i.e., The Rule of Three) – manageable for you to deliver and memorable enough for the audience to retain.  If you are consistent, your whole team will be clued in. In my old job, everyone referred to it by my initials – BT’s 3.

Second Course – Use Stories and Questions to Warm Yourself Up and the Audience

You have any combination of the following three options – all designed to help you and the audience exchange energy.

• Storytellers: Deliver Your Stories in 5 Minutes or Less. 

  Storytelling can be the most effective way to illustrate a key point and help your audience see themselves in the story. But a story delivered too long or that doesn’t directly deliver your message does the exact opposite. My rule of thumb is to get in and out of the story in 5 minutes or less and make the connection clearly. My employees would name my stories, such as “The Climb,” a 2-minute story referring to the mental preparation needed before a steep climb on cross-country skis. I used it to get my leadership team’s head around a key business development challenge we were facing.

• Flip the Q&A on Its Head – You Ask the Questions.

  An easy way to draw the audience in is to go on the offensive by asking them questions. Everything from “what’s one good thing that happened last week” to “if you were in my shoes, what would you be thinking about?” Randomly call on people, and you’ll find that everyone is on their toes.

• Recognize Recognition

  Recognition may be the most powerful appetizer there is. Make sure recognition is precise, and you know the specifics. Make sure the recognition supports at least one of the three messages on top.

Third Course – The Main Story

• Change the Messenger. One easy way to spice things up is to change the primary messenger – different voice/different message. And it gives you a chance to see your team in action.

• Trim the Fat – The main story must connect back to the three messages on top. Don’t try fancy maneuvers to get the main story across – go after it directly – leveraging other voices in the organization. And minimal slides, if any.

• Solicit Participation Often – Use some directed questions to keep the audience on their toes, or offer a lightning round of questions in the middle of the story to create a dialogue rather than a monologue.

• Intervene When Your Team Goes Off Script – it happens in almost every meeting. Get comfortable with the 2-3 ways you can intervene to get things back on track.

The Last Course – Actionable Close

You have to be the closer – tying everything back to the three messages and specifically what you want done. The timeframe for action should be less than two weeks, or it becomes non-actionable.

These should put a little jalapeño in your All-Hands Meeting. Of course, don’t forget the basics: don’t read from a script, change your inflection, don’t look at the slide deck but at the audience, and slow everything down.

A Culinary Note: The Role of Experimentation

Both in All-Hands and in cooking, push yourself to try the new and the uncomfortable. Even though I’m a recipe follower, I’m always extending into new cuisines and new techniques for that experimentation. Any of the classics – Julia Child (French), Marcella Hazan (Italian), and Fannie Farmer are great for technique. Recently, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt has taken technique to a new level.

On delivering speeches, town halls, and presentations, it works the same. I follow my general recipe of a strong opening, 3 messages, a concise story, and an actionable close. I tinker with everything else constantly – slides, no slides, open Q&A, panels, client testimonials, recognition. (And when I cook, I record what worked in what setting so I can pull from it in the future.) 

If you’re a CEO or senior leader wrestling with focus, execution, or momentum, I offer short strategy conversations to help you pressure-test priorities.

Originally published on January 20, 2026, on LinkedIn.

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