Do your virtual team meetings need more focus? More engagement? Better results? In this “Virtual Meetings That Don’t Suck” video series, visual facilitator and engagement specialist Carolyn Ellis of BrillianceMastery.com shares her tips to help you create conversations that count!
TIP #7: Virtual Meetings That Don’t Suck – Digestion Time
Transcript of Video
Hello, everyone! It’s Carolyn Ellis from BrillianceMastery.com! Thank you for joining me for this short video, which is part of my ongoing series, Virtual Meetings that Don’t Suck.
This video’s tip is about Digestion Time. We need to build digestion times to our virtual meetings. Let me explain a little bit what I mean about that. We figured out so far that you can’t have the same length of time of meeting because people just don’t have the attention span for that as they would if they were in a real in person meeting. Fine. So, we made them shorter.
But unfortunately, what a lot of people are still doing is packing in our agendas with a lot of content. They are really trying to cram every bit of information and messaging that we can into a short period of time. And there’s no breathing space in that. It’s kind of like when you are having a delicious meal and there are lots of courses coming at you. Each course in itself is delicious. But then the next one comes in, and the next one comes in, and you haven’t had a chance to finish the first one yet. What was that first kind of delicious becomes a bit of a hassle. You get sort of frantic and, ultimately, you may end up with a gut ache.
This is the risk that we run, when we don’t build in Digestion Time into our agendas. I have three tips for you on how you can do that. The first tip is think about priming the pump. What I mean by that is think about what can you do before the meeting actually starts to get people ready to be engaged, focused and already energized and connected to that subject. Whether this is a pre-read, or maybe there’s a video that they watch, even if you just send out a few ideas about what’s going to be on the agenda and some questions that you want people to think about before they arrive at the meeting, that will help people already start to do some of the pre-thinking and preparing for making the most use of that time.
The second tip I have for you here is about our break times. Even if you’re only doing a 90 minute session, it’s really important to have a bit of a break. It’s not just for our bodies or the bio breaks or to stretch our legs. Our brains need a little bit of a break, just to give a little shift of focus, and let some of that information in the conversation sink in. In that little space of time of that break, your brain will start to make connection. It will start to make sense of things. It will start to be able to prioritize issues, which really helps people when it comes to what do you do after the meeting, which is take some sort of action.
The third tip I have for you is to really do some reflection and building reflection time as part of the design of your agenda. Reflection could be simple, it could be just as simple as having people write something down on a sticky note, write down the one thing that really is most interesting to you about this. Encourage people to use the chat. Make sure that you’re using breakout spaces to help people talk, share ideas, build on each other’s thinking, and start to make sense and meaning of the information that they receiving in the in that meeting.
So there you have it: prime the pump, plan for breaks for the brain, and build in reflection time to help people really be able to digest and make some sense of the meeting. Here’s the thing – if you don’t do it in the meeting, the chances of people actually doing the digestion, i.e., figuring out what they’re supposed to be doing after the meeting, is pretty low. People will not digest after the meal. They will probably forget what they talked about. So this is why building that digestion time in to your agenda, it’s like an enzyme. I’m really milking this metaphor! It’s like an enzyme that helps you get all the nutrients out of that conversation, to support your body, to support your mind, to support your hands to make effective action happen.
I hope that’s been helpful for you. If you’d like to have a conversation with me about how I can support you with helping sure that your next virtual meeting doesn’t suck, I’m happy to talk to you. Just send me an email to Carolyn@BrillianceMastery.com. Have a great day and we’ll see you next time!
Missed a tip? You can check out other “Virtual Meetings that Don’t Suck” video tips by clicking below:
Tip 1 – Start with the End in Mind
Tip 2 – Less is More
Tip 3 – Engage at the Start
Tip 4 – Wisdom is in the Room
Tip 5 – Dynamic Game Plan
Tip 6 – Watch Your Costs
Tip 8 – Leading Through Connecting
