Tips to Shake Up Your Next Zoom Meeting
We are coming up on the 1-year anniversary of the pandemic which launched our way of working today, the ubiquitous video/zoom meetings. If you’re like me, I’m bored with the zoom meetings I attend.
Use these tips to shake up your next zoom meeting.
- Have a background contest. Use the virtual background video option in Zoom and challenge the team to come up with the most creative background at your next team meeting. Don’t forget to have a prize for the winner.
- Who can bring the best animal video. Once a month, pick up to 5 people to share what they think is their best animal video. Then take a vote and see which one wins.
- Share a meal once a month. Schedule a meeting over the lunch hour and have everyone bring their lunch, or if your team is in different time zones encourage them to bring their appropriate meal, to recreate that in-person break room atmosphere. Do make it optional.
- Build water cooler time into your meetings. Set aside 5-10 minutes of every meeting where people can talk about what is happening in their life or talk about what they are binge-watching to bring back those conversations that happened in conference rooms while people were waiting for the meeting to start.
- Add a quick game. An example might be a photo story. Have each participant find the 3rd most recent photo on their smartphone and show it and share the story about why they took it. Another example might be a word of the day. Start with the word of the day, “apple” and then see who can slip the word into the conversation without the rest of the team noticing. If someone does, they get to say, “word of the day.”
Find the rhythm that works for you and your team to keep your folks engaged. Be creative, have fun, and mix it up. Do be careful to not overdo it. Don’t forget the not-so-competitive folks on your team and encourage them to participate as well. Everything we can do to help people stay engaged with this now “normal” way of meeting the better.