By taking your meeting offsite, you’re already thinking about productivity in a creative way. But if that isn’t going to be enough for your team, try some of these out-of-the-box ideas about how to elicit innovative thinking and engaged productivity at your next offsite meeting.
Start Early Enough to Socialize
When planning your next half- or full-day meeting, be sure to include 10 minutes at the beginning to allow for a little small talk. It will give everyone a chance to catch up and you’ll start the meeting with people who are a little happier and a little more invested right off the bat.
Change It Up—About Every 20 Minutes
Break up a long meeting with a variety of activities or presentation styles and you’ll keep more of your team members more engaged for longer periods. Try working in Q&A sessions, small group breakouts, videos, mini-breaks, a variety of presenters, games, quizzes, voting, and opportunity for feedback.
Set the Stage
Lengthy training sessions can be especially dull, but not if you let your trainees know that at the end they’ll be asked to create a skit, song, dance, or other creative interpretation of the information they’ve learned that day.
Career Swap
As everyone walks into the room, hand them a slip of paper and ask them to write down their title and a few words of explanation regarding their role at the company. Collect all the slips of paper and when you’re ready to generate discussion or fresh ideas, pass the bowl around and ask everyone to choose a slip of paper. When the discussion begins, ask participants to address issues, imagine solutions, and consider concepts from the perspective of the title on their paper.
Call a Friend
When working on a particularly challenging problem, break for 10 minutes and ask everyone to call a friend outside the group who might be able to offer assistance, insight, or a new perspective.
Children and Pets
Need a great icebreaker? Ask meeting participants to bring in pictures of their kids or their pets. Start the meeting with a few words from each participant about their beloved brood or favorite four-legged friends. If this isn’t quite enough to get the ball rolling, step it up by asking everyone to name one quality that they share with their child or their pet.
Bring in a Masseuse
Depending on the culture of your company you might be able to enlist the assistance of a masseuse to keep participants relaxed during the meeting. If you like the idea of 5-minute massages but wonder if it will be too distracting to everyone else in the room, move the masseuse out of the room and excuse people in 20 minute intervals for the best 5 – 10 minute break a person could ask for.
Whether any of these ideas appeal to your or not, you can be sure to invigorate your next meeting by holding it in the creative spaces at Blue Ocean. Simply moving offsite will boost employee engagement during the meeting and lead to more innovative ideas. Give us a call today to learn more about why meetings are just better here.
