How to make virtual meetings more fun?
Isn’t that a question that we would all really like to answer? Especially as we’re doing more and more remote work and working from home. We get really burnt out from these pixelated boxes that we’re constantly looking at.
The good thing is it’s my job to work with some of the most innovative companies and universe, top universities on the planet to help make online connection and engagement really easy and fun. So, you’re in the right place. I’m Chad Littlefield and I can’t wait to spend a little bit of time with you unpacking “how to make virtual meetings more fun“.
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3 Tips to Help Make Virtual Meetings More Fun
They’re super easy to lead, universally appealing and you can at any point in time pick them up but also share them with your team as well. They’re are also super transportable ideas, if you will. I’m also going to unpack a framework that is going to serve as filter that you can run your agenda, your syllabus, your conference plan. You can run it through this filter sort of check box, if you will. If it doesn’t meet the criteria, you can almost guarantee that you’re designing a virtual meeting that isn’t going to be fun. So, we’ll unpack that filter that framework as well and perhaps, if you stick around to the end, we’ll drop a bonus tip as well.
Before we dive immediately into the tips and framework, why fun? Why should we add fun into meetings?
I had a teacher and mentor once who gave me the acronym for fun. F-U-N-N: Functional Understanding Not Necessary. It’s like, “Interesting!” and you know, I have a nephew. He used to be much smaller. But I have a nephew who used to run around at family reunions just saying the quote, “Fun is fun”, right? It’s like funn is fun. That is one type of funn that’s valuable in and of itself. There’s some things that just bring joy and they’re just funn. We don’t need to unpack why and the purpose behind it. It’s just fun and there’s value in that.
Then there’s another type of fun. Just the fun with one N. As an experiential educator, I care about that level of fun and a whole bunch too because that fun can be translated as deeper engagement.
To unpack this idea of how to make something fun, I want to introduce to you the fun theory. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s pretty phenomenal. Maybe we can drop some clips in here as we go along explaining the fun theory. If you make something fun, you can actually increase performance and change people’s behavior to guide toward that fun route. One of the ways that I was introduced to the fun theory was through this video that Volkswagen put out. They showed up in Stockholm and they went into this subway where there were stair. Big giant staircase going to the outside world on the left and its very convenient automatic escalator going on the right. Naturally, human beings default toward our comfort zone and the path of least resistance. And so, most people took the escalator and then this team came in and said,
“What happens if we add a little bit of fun to taking the stairs?”
They came in at night and they turned the entire giant staircase into a piano. So, every stair you stepped on played this piano note. Cool, right? Just like fundamentally, this is awesome. Right? You’re not going to do this in your virtual meetings. But cool the concept’s kind of fun. What I think was really really neat was that 66% more people than normal took the stairs than the escalator, right? So, when we ask:
“Why fun?”
Why fun? Because if we don’t, we risk people being asleep on autopilot in our meetings riding up the escalator. And so, there’s an immense business and educational value to introducing fun into our meetings.
Let’s dive into this framework that will serve as a filter to make your meetings, your agendas, your syllabus, your classes, your retreats, your virtual conferences more fun.
Imagine that there are 5 kinds of people in the world. From my observation actually, from working with hundreds of different universities and organizations, I would say maybe there’s not 5 types of people but there are 5 states of mind that people are most often in when they’re in any sort of meeting or gathering. The 3 primary ones, people can be in a state. These are states not traits. These are states not traits. That’s important because at any given time, somebody can oscillate between any of these states.
But the 3 most common ones that you’ll find your own meeting participants or students or staff in is going to be:
- Critics
- Consumers
- Contributors
Critics are very comfortable pointing out what’s wrong with the meeting and how this meeting’s boring and it should have been an email. Very comfortable pointing out what’s wrong. Totally uninterested in doing anything about it.
Consumers up one level from that just kind of passively scrolling through meeting, through the meeting, through the gathering. They’re not looking to really stick their head up, they’re not looking to volunteer. They’re just kind of there cruising this passive engagement.
Up beyond that and across a very important threshold, you enter the land of Contributors. These are people who are not victims to boring meetings. They’re not victims to boring virtual meetings especially. They are people who want to contribute. They want to add to the culture. They know that they get to have a say in the level of engagement and fun that can happen in any given meeting. Because if you have a leader who’s trying to have fun all by themself, but nobody else is willing to contribute to that dynamic, it will not be a fun virtual meeting.
Critics, consumers and contributors.
On the opposite poles, I would say even below. Maybe even off the graph, off the charts, below critics you’ve got curmudgeons. These are people that are just living in a perpetual state of crankiness.
If you’re familiar with the Pareto principle, they suck 80% of the energy in the room and really only give 20% of the the results or impact.
On the totally opposite threshold above contributors, you’ve got connectors. These are people who become hubs for contribution. They’re people who are amazing at connecting people to people and people to ideas and they are really great at making fun contagious in any given circumstance.
The filter is, when you look at your agenda or your outline, just ask yourself the question, “Which bucket does this put my participants in?” If you have a meeting item that is you just talking to the team at the very least, that’s a consumer bucket. Maybe, if they’re thinking they might not like it, that might put them into the critic bucket. If they woke up on the wrong side of the bed, they’re going to be in the curmudgeon bucket. Any of those categories is not a recipe for a fun virtual meeting.
What is a recipe for a fun virtual meeting?
It is when you’re able to create places and opportunities for people to contribute and to connect.
So, first of all, take that framework. Before you even try to apply these 3 tips, think about just running your agenda like a paper shredder. Running your agenda through that framework to see how it lines up with what you want to create in your meeting. What kind of feeling energy etc you want to create in your online gathering. As someone who makes online connection, engagement easy and fun for a living, I was curious to do a google search.
So, I just started typing “Fun is like…” I like metaphors analogies.
“Fun is like…” The top google result that came out for me is “Fun is like life insurance.” I was like, “What?” What I realized though is something really cool about that because in some ways, humor is when the mind thinks that things are going to go a certain way. So, someone’s telling a story and it’s happening, it’s happening, it’s happening. You can kind of see what’s going to happen next. Then the story takes a turn and goes in a completely different direction. That’s comedy. That’s why people laugh, right? It’s like the brain’s nervous reaction to being like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” That’s not what i thought was going to happen.
I would say to create fun in your meetings, you’ve got to do something different. If you try to do just subtly nuanced different things, it may not really work. May not have much of an impact there. So, fun is like life insurance.
3 tips for making virtual meetings really fun
1. hide your self view. Most video platforms whether you’re on Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, wherever; have an ability to hide your self view. I don’t know why this is the default setting to be on. But human beings, were not designed to be in meetings watching themselves being in meetings. It’s weird, it’s exhausting, it contributes to Zoom burnout. And and even worse, it puts all the focus on this person, right? Puts all the focus on this person. And when you hide self-view, you’re able to shift the focus to your team, your group, your students. And that is an immediate number 1, tip recipe to starting to
shift the perspectives to other centric, more contributor mindset where some fun can happen.
2. Use the world around you. One of the gifts that being all remote has given us is that we have this entire life of context all around us. I can introduce you to my son, Otto. But if we were in a conference room together I probably wouldn’t have a picture frame or his hat sitting on my desk. The ability to invite people to share pieces of their contacts. You can do that in all sorts of creative ways.
I had somebody share with me a participant in one of my workshops recently shared with me that they would hold up like a famous piece of art or they’d screen share a famous piece of art. It was the group’s goal to run around the house and grab all different objects that sort of made up that art. And they had to recreate that portrait in Zoom gallery view. You can’t do that if you’re in a plain dry conference room or a classroom. Use the world around you. It’s also a phenomenal tool for
connection.
So okay, Leave your Zoom box and go grab an object that represents a part of who you are in the world or grab an object that represents something you love to do and come back. Don’t show it to the camera but get ready to share with the group. There’s something really phenomenal about having that visual context. Beyond that, our brains are actually wired to take in visual and experiential data and encode it into long-term memory. Your group will be more likely to actually remember that moment even if they don’t remember the exact word that somebody said. They’ll be like, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah. You’re the person that like held up the heart because…”
3. Get out of your virtual jail cell and move. That’s harsh language. But typically when we meet virtually, a couple dynamics are happening. We have the world’s most phenomenal autofocus camera device in our head. When we’re meeting remotely, we use it to stare at a screen 20 inches away and that’s it. It’s like letting our eyes… That contributes to the Zoom burnout. Getting away from that space, allows you to your eyes to readjust to get away from the screen.
So, inviting people to go grab an object or to move or literally to take a break and say, “Turn your video off and go lay down. Do stretches. Check in with your body see what you need. Like take breaks.” Movement breaks. Not just like breaks to eat lunch or breaks to pee. Like take breaks intentionally designed to create movement.
The other thing is you can create movement on the screen. One of my favorite exercises in is inviting people as a warm-up or coming back is inviting people to move to mirror what you are doing. One of my favorite exercises too is to invite the group to mirror what you’re doing. If you move to the left of your screen, they move to the left. If you move to the right, they move to the right. There’s something about… Especially when you’re in a grid view, seeing everybody moving all at once and actually moving your body creates a little element of fun and usually changes the shape of of people’s face.
That was tips 1, 2 and 3. Would love to drop a little bonus tip on you right now which is to ask for visual cues. When you’re in person, you can hear the chuckles the laughter the side conversations the metaphorical eye rolls. You can hear and see all that. In zoom or in any virtual platform, everybody’s on mute. If people have their video on, they’re just like sitting there like this. Engagement on zoom can look like this. Not very engaging. I make a point somewhere between 5 and 15 minutes in any sort of presentation or meeting that I’m having to ask for visual cues. Hey, on a scale of I’m doing really phenomenal this meeting is meeting my needs to this meeting should have been an email, where are you at? Inviting people to give that spectrum. Give that clap. Some sort of visual cue. I do it specifically request it over video rather than like just a digital hand claps or like the like button or whatever. Because there’s something about actually physically gesturing that creates a little bit of fun, a little bit of engagement in that moment.
In true form to the channel, I want to end with a quote and a question.
The quote to end our time together is just an invitation to start where you are not where you wish you were. We all wish that our virtual meetings were remarkably engaging and super fun. But just chill. Like start small, experiment with some things. See how the group responds and go from there.
The question for the day is: “What is something that amazes you?” I’m going to invite you to use this in 2 ways.
1. In the comments, feel free to drop an answer to the question. “What is something that amazes you about meeting virtually or about meeting remotely?”
2. This question is a really great question to kick off as an unofficial start. A little connection before content in your meeting to spark a little bit more fun. Right at the very beginning, just have people drop in the chat. “What is something that amazes you?” And to kick off your meeting. You get to start in that place. To start in a place of amazement rather than like, “What’s on the agenda for today?” is a super useful way to start.