Why it’s worth being a little more creative in meetings

You don’t have to go way out there creative. Just a little can make a difference. 


🔶 For participants 

Are they participants - they’ll be doing, contributing and participating? Or are they attendees, an audience of spectators just watching and listening?

Creativity brings focus, stimulation to keep interest high and helps hold attention. 

Creativity makes memories. If you’re dealing with dry or complex matters, creativity anchors the key points. 

It brings content to life!


🔶 For you 

Creativity helps you stay interested. If it’s good for you, it’s likely to be good for them too. 

Moods and energy are infectious. If you’re not feelin’ it, they won’t be!

Creativity helps keep content fresh if it’s repetitive or the same topic as the last meeting. 

Variety alerts us. 


Many meetings are experiences of monotonous boredom. They benefit from injections of creativity. 

You don’t have to go for crazy creativity. A subtle or clever activity can build engagement, make swifter progress and help reach better outcomes. 

Are you using creativity in meetings?

Creative activities for online meetings

We often hear the tappity-tap of people working on emails while they’re online in a meeting.

It’s not their fault. 

They’re BORED!

They’ve had four of these boring meetings today. And you're dragging them through another one? YAWN!

We must make things more relevant, more creative - and it will most certainly be more effective.

If you’re inviting people to an online meeting to work, plan, contribute or decide, be sure you have a range of inspiring activities on hand. 

Giving people a question and putting them in breakout rooms is done - overdone! And it's just ONE activity. 

There are MANY OTHER WAYS to add connection, relevance and creativity to online meetings.

And it need not be ‘crazy creativity’ but relevant, smart and brilliant creativity!

I’ve spent years creating activities for meetings. And I’ve adapted, edited and morphed existing activities to make them more interesting ... and they work online too. 

Everything is an idea

Our opinions are ideas. 
Messages are ideas too. 
Statements and questions are. 

Movies are ideas. 
Products and services are as well. 
Blogs, posts and comments are. 

Our opinions and beliefs are ideas. 
Same with our impressions and perspectives. 

Ideas are everywhere. 

They’re how we understand what something is and how we communicate about it. 

Don’t be too upset if what you’re trying to communicate doesn’t change someone’s opinion immediately. It’s your idea, landing up against their ideas. 

We’re presented with so many ideas every day, it’s no wonder some of them don’t get through!

It may take a little while or some repeated attempts. 

Our world is a big mix of ideas, hitting up against one another, circling, collecting in groups, moving, swarming and changing shape. 

Get more of your ideas out into circulation and there’s more of a chance for happy collisions, random landings and repeated connections. 

It’s most certainly a numbers game. 

Toning it down or sparking it up

Are you holding on to your ideas, not launching or sharing them?

Fear can keep us contained and restricted. We have ideas but are worried about the impact of sharing them. 

So we withhold them and keep ourselves protected. 

But sometimes an idea we have keeps on coming back. It’s as if it won’t be pushed down or quietened. We believe it so strongly, it just won’t go away!

If you’ve got an idea that won’t go away, slide it out there into the world. 

The Spotlight Effect is at play : it’s the bias where we think people are paying more attention to us than they really are. 

That means even if we think ‘everyone’ will see our idea, they won’t. Many people are busy in their own world and often our stuff doesn’t initially reach as many people as we might fear ... or hope. 

The thing with sharing ideas is, it gets easier the more you do it. 

I used to be scared of sharing and expressing my ideas. Wouldn’t share them at all! And now, it’s daily - and more frequently if you include workshops, keynotes, mentoring and meetings. 

So are you toning things down? Or sparking it up and letting your ideas loose? 

Get sparking - I’d love to see your ideas out there!

Making things up as you go along

Not everything needs to be planned, controlled, organised and structured. Come on .. not everything!

We have an incredible resource in us: our experience, ideas and ingenuity. 

The thing is ... we may not trust ourselves to provide from that resource. 

Improvisation pioneer and playwright Keith Johnstone, says that we edit, censor and judge our ideas. And so much so, that our ideas may never make it out of our head! 

We jump in and criticize, stifling and stopping them from ever reaching the outside world. 

They may only ever live in our mind. 
It’s as if we don’t trust what we are really capable of. 

Sure, we may not have experienced the exact thing or have the exact answer from our history. 

But the resources of our mind are flexible, adaptable and malleable. We can make things up. Even as we we go along. 

We won’t know what we can do with our ideas unless we trust them. 

It may only take a few seconds - just long enough to put them ‘out there’.