Energize your (virtual) meetings

Looking for more energy in your virtual meetings? Feeling that they are a bit ‘flat’.

While we are working from home, ZOOM or similar video platforms are here to stay. If you are feeling that your virtual meetings are lacking energy or are in a rut here are some suggestions to get them back up and running again.

Top tip: These work for regular meetings too

Rituals are your friend

Humans like rituals and routines, they ease the cognitive load on our brains.

When two (or more) people meet a ritual is formed, whether that is your friends or your work colleagues, you establish a set of behaviours that stay throughout meetings of that type. If you keep doing the same things, you will get the same outcomes.

If you have attended our ‘How to make your SteerCo work for you’ webinars, you will know that establishing a meeting ritual early can be a good thing, if you plan for it. Otherwise, it will find you.

If you have an established ritual the first step is the hardest, recognise that you need to disrupt the routine and do something different. The biggest barrier to this is upsetting the expectations of those that attend the meeting. What if they think you are crazy? What if they challenge you?

As the host of the meeting, the group look to you for the accepted behaviour of the meeting. You get to set the agenda, the style, how things are done. We look to be led, it reduces our cognitive load, as long as we can see that we are not being threatened and that it is a step in the right(ish) direction we will go with it.

Steps

• Step 1: What is the purpose of your meeting, what do you want to achieve?
  If you do not know where you are going, how will you know if you are taking the right path. Start with a clearly defined and achievable outcome. Set an agenda to achieve the outcome.

• Step 2: If this is an existing meeting, what are you trying to solve for?
  Lack of engagement, lack of energy, inability to focus on the problem? Know what you are trying to fix and what good will look like.

• Step 3: Pick an intervention that will work. Build your confidence in delivering the disruption. You are the constraining factor.

• Step 4: Measure the effectiveness and course-correct if necessary.

Create Energy

We are stuck in front of our screens day in day out. We are moving less and less. Our bodies are slowing down.

1. Schedule energy boosts. Put them on the agenda

2. Catch the flagging energy and throw an energy boost in.

3. Our concentration wanes at about 45 minutes, so shift the energy into smaller blocks. A physical break every 90 minutes helps too. Factor breaks into your agenda, your team will be refreshed.

Examples

1. Smile!: A simple one, but smiling, being positive and encouraging humour is the quickest way to shift the feel of a meeting. Catch negative thoughts and change them into positive before they can fester. Keep smiling. Focus on the positive, with a can-do attitude.

2. Scavenger hunt: Gets everyone out of their chair as they go and look for something in their house that matches the criteria; Something yellow, something with wheels, your oddest kitchen gadget, the photo (old school) or memento that means the most to you, a picture of what is outside your window.

3. ZOOM disco: Remember to share your screen *including* the audio sound. Go for some high beat (100-140) music, there are plenty of sites offering creative commons licensed music. A chance to spotlight a new artist. Pick a track of about 1 minute and as the DJ you are obliged to lead the dancing with some great moves. Short, sharp, effective.

4. Stretch it out: Some desk stretches. Just check that everyone has the movement to do the stretches before you start. Search for ‘desk stretches’ to get yourself going.

5. Walking meetings: Ditch the video, go old school with a conference call. Grab your mobiles and go for a team walk. Great for meetings that do not need screen sharing. Take a picture along the way to share with the group when you get back. Walking is great for brainstorming (see below).

Build connections

It is harder, but not impossible, to make connections and build relationships when you only have ZOOM as a tool.

1. Spend time making the connections, factor in time for the informal as well as the formal.

2. We like people who are like us. Find the things you have in common.

Examples

1. Find the connections: Split the group into pairs and ask them to each find as many connections as possible between each other in 5 minutes. At the end of time, ask for how many connections were found, and the most bizarre.

2. 1:1 breakouts: Set a ‘get to know you question’ and allocate everyone to breakout groups. Even better, run several versions of this throughout the day. I still love this list from the NYT.

3. My life in 10 minutes: Choose one of the group to share their life story in ten minutes, one per meeting. Challenge the group to find the points of connection that they have with that person.

Brainstorming

Are you missing a whiteboard and some sticky notes? The collaborative feel of everyone joining in together to solve the challenge? We can achieve the same in our virtual world, it is just ‘different’.

1. Create a space where everyone can share ideas without being judged. A way of collecting them.

2. Work together on the theming, or set a small group to theme, then come back together to revisit the themes, like a facilitator would.

3. Do the so-what and confirm the actions

Examples

1. Online Powerpoint: It isn’t as fancy as many of the whiteboard applications out there, but it is familiar to many. We have a template with lots of text boxes (aka sticky notes) that can be filled in on a page. The instruction is to click on an empty note that does not have anyone else clicked in it and type away. Online powerpoint shows who is clicked into a text box. You could even have a page per person, then collate across pages. Colour code the sticky notes for themes and put on pages ready for the so-what.
   Download a Powerpoint template for brainstorming

2. Set up a survey: Most survey tools have an option to have surveys with multiple entries from one person. Ask the question and collect the answers, encourage lots of them as it takes a while to warm our brains up. We find Microsoft Forms easier for this as it feeds directly into an excel spreadsheet, but Survey Monkey can do the same. This works brilliantly if not everyone can attend one session. Then come to the meeting with the results.

3. Go for a walk: If you are feeling creatively blocked, head out for a walk. With your robot brain focused on not falling over your creative brain can run free. If you have headphones, you can walk and talk.

4. Use Music: Struggling to concentrate, consider playing binaural beats whilst the brainstorming activity is going on.

Engagement

How often have you checked out of a meeting, checked your emails or carried on with your work in the confidence that your super skill of multi-tasking means that you can do both at the same time? Yes, we have all done it, especially if the meeting did not feel engaging.

1. Only invite to the meeting those that need to be there to achieve the outcome and be clear on their role. RASCI works well here.

2. Watch out for those that attend because of FOMO (fear of missing out). Is a meeting the right way to communicate, or is their attendance because information is not disseminated properly?

3. Challenge yourself on whether your meeting rituals are getting you to the outcomes you want to achieve.

 Examples

1. Use interactivity throughout: Thumbs up, polls, small breakout groups which you cannot hide in.

2. Do not entertain: Shift the traditional ‘led’ meeting on its head. Hand the conversations over to the audience, so that they take part. Ask their opinions and act as the facilitator to summarize, rather than entertain the group.

3. Call the team out: Get in the habit of randomly calling out those that are not taking part: “Hey Bill, we haven’t heard from you yet, what do you think?”.

4. ZOOM Bingo: Send out Bingo cards in advance with phrases on them. Have a small prize or bragging rights for those that complete the card first.

Confidence

Fear of failure, or looking like an idiot in front of your colleagues is the reason we shy away from disrupting the expectations of our meeting.

1. Lead and they will follow: As the host and leader of the meeting, it is your role to lead the meeting. The tribe will look to you to see what the accepted behaviour of the meeting is. You have the licence and permission to drive the meeting

2. Smile, you are on stage: Be confident and make it seem as though this is a normal part of any meeting. If you feel discomfort the others around you will too. Humans like to feel energised, connected and do good work, you are facilitating that.

3. If it does not go to plan: Do not take it personally and do not pedal back from ever making a similar intervention. Be ready with a holding phrase “Huh, I did not expect that to happen”, or “Maybe we will try something different next time”. In our experience, we rarely have to use these. A well-timed intervention works really well and we bathe in the positive feedback.

4. End on a high: The peak-end rule! When we remember an event we selectively remember parts of them; the opening (make it strong and positive), a significant part during the event, and the end.
   
   Always give yourself time to wrap the meeting. Pause, what feeling do you want people to leave with; confidence, enthusiasm, prepared to take a risk, excited for the future. This is your moment. Do not allow your good work to be judged by an ‘oops we have run out of time’ and the sound of beeping as your team leave. 

Want More?

Our cognitive biases drive much of our behaviour in meetings.

Knowing how we respond to information, or behave in group setting, can help you design much more effective meetings.

Check out our ‘Humans are predictable’ article for what we factor into our meetings and conversations.