My friends at the National Institute for Civil Discourse are taking their ideas home for the holiday. (Thanksgiving in the U.S. is this coming Thursday.) Your Civility Survival Guide is a nice list of things to consider saying – or not saying – during this big family day.

I plan to keep those ideas handy over the entire weekend.

Six months ago Tim David predicted Donald Trump’s victory.

In my profession, I give a lot of speeches on change management tools and techniques, as well as longer roll-up-your-sleeves presentations/workshops. Over the years, it occurred to me that there were three things that distinguished presentations that truly stand out. I am talking about presentations in which you expect people to take something useful away. You hired a speaker because you believed he or she would offer something important to your organization.

When people are forced to attend a session or you bring in a speaker just to fill a slot in the agenda, you risk wasting people’s time and your money.If you expect people to learn something, then they need to come to the meeting with high expectations. They need to be hungry to hear what’s being said. When that occurs, people are engaged, they ask probing and challenging questions, and they start connecting what the speaker is saying to what they need to learn. And if the speaker fails to deliver, they will challenge him or her.

Engaging people in planning meetings is all about energy. Some things you do might provide a spark that ignites passion and commitment. Other things can sap potential positive energy from the room within minutes.

One key to successfully getting a change started on the right foot is to use meetings effectively. Too often, so-called planning meetings are passive. People sit in the dark while the meeting leader shows them slides. You need meetings that are alive. Noisy. Meetings where people want to jump in and do the work.

Geena Davis said,  “. . . when ‘Thelma and Louise’ came out the reaction was so overwhelming that it made me realize how few opportunities we have for women to feel like that coming out of a movie.” So, she created the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media to address this problem.

“I go to meetings at the guilds and networks and studios and production companies and present the research in a private and collegial way. And the reaction is fantastic, because they’re shocked and horrified, and they want to make a change.”