How to stop your virtual meetings from being so boring

We have all gone through this phase during the first lockdown about how great it was to have our meetings virtually. But as time has progressed, there seem to be virtual meetings for everything, even though sometimes an email could have been sent instead.  Then there are follow up meetings that have been set up because the people who make the decisions are not part of the conversation (just like back in the office).

We also appear to have more distractions and are becoming more disengaged sometimes called “Zoom Fatigue”.

So, we teamed up this week with the Knowledge and Community Network that I co-host to try and find some solutions to these problems. We were lucky to be able to have Richard Gold  of Bulbb host a webinar on the Playful Principles for Productive, Inventive meetings. 

Richard took elements from his experience with Lego Serious Play to show us how they could be used with virtual meetings. You can watch the full recording here.

Some key bits for me were very much about going back to the basics about how to run a meeting.

I bet if you look back through you last few meetings and used this simple template you would have missed so many of them.

Another key tip for me was the ‘8-minute rule’.  If you are trying to keep people engaged in a meeting then they have to do something every 8 minutes or so to keep them engaged.

It could be as simple as asking everyone to take a minute to think about a question, breaking out into smaller groups etc.

One of the bests bits for me was that even though the webinar was over 90 minutes long, it did not feel like it. It was fun, interactive and the feedback from the other participants agreed and said the same thing.

There were so many tips and tricks that Richard shared that you could take into your virtual meetings, so it’s well worth having a watch back when you have time.