It has happened to us all; with the best of intentions that short meeting doubles in time or a conference away for a few days of meetings can leave even the best of delegates less than enthused. Here are our most unusual tips to take to your next meeting or event stand out.
- P.E time - Starting with the most obvious and perhaps the most usual of our unusual meeting tips, is interrupting a meeting for physical exercise. It is the age-old cliché to interrupt a meeting for a few star jumps or standing up mid-meeting but how about a full 10-minute mini exercise class. Delegates nominate a host (if meetings are a regular thing within the company) or the guest speaker of the meeting provides a quick burst of their favourite physical activity. These classes can range from boxing to short HIIT classes and even a mini dance session – the possibilities are endless.
- Yoga Retreats – This has become an increasingly popular way to conduct meetings or longer conferences. By encouraging your delegates to attend a yoga class before the meeting begins, this stimulates participants from the get-go and has them relaxed, energised and ready to tackle the day ahead. By staging short meditation breaks throughout your meeting, using both indoor and outdoor space, this breaks up what could be a monotonous few days and keeps your delegates on their feet (quite literally).
- Egg timer – Keeping a tight schedule can increase productivity, engagement as well as removing unnecessary repetition. Meetings can often circle back and return to points that have already been covered, even with the clearest of agendas. By setting a time goal on an egg timer, your meeting instantly becomes more engaged and on point with a clear finishing line. The hardest part of this task comes when the egg timer goes off, by sticking fairly rigidly to your allotted time, this sets the tone for follow up meetings and encourages participants to engage and have their ideas ready upfront. The more adventurous meetings can also add in punishments for overrunning such as push-ups or a quick-fire Q&A session from the rest of the team - this will soon encourage people to stick within the allotted time.
- Back to school – By having school activities such as colouring in books or play-doh available on the table instantly sets a more relaxed tone for a meeting. For those who do take the option to participate in a spot of colouring-in, it has been shown as an excellent stress reliever and can distract the most uncomfortable and jittery of delegates. Also including school like tasks such as creating Origami animals, can really engage participants from the start and create a positive environment, making it more productive.
- Add a little tipple. This suggestion easily has the potential to be the most popular of our unusual tips. Often used as a trick in roles within creative industries adding a drink to the proceedings and encouraging a more social environment is said to encourage participants into unleashing new ideas as they have created a safe and relaxing headspace to nourish ideas - sounds good to us!
- Virtual Meetings – Although we predicted that the rise of A.I software will soon become a thing of normality in the not too distance future; here we are talking virtual digital meetings rather than robots and virtual head ware. This suggestion means keeping your meetings silent and with communication only allowed through your computer (using software such as Google Hangouts or Skype). This unusual technique provides a more open forum for quieter employees who perhaps would not normally engage in the usual meeting set up. Another option would be to add an anonymous platform to your meeting for participants to voice their ideas in, creating an environment they feel comfortable in and you could perhaps see a real shift in your office dynamic.
Elite Hotels offer classic venues, steeped in history but that doesn’t mean that we have to encourage historical practices when we come to meetings.
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