Traci Lewis

Have you ever been in a meeting online which wasn’t actually that great? How often has it just been a convenient but poor substitute for the real thing? This needs to change and fast!

Now more than ever we need to ensure that we DO run great virtual meetings  -  here are 10 top team meeting ideas to help you be the person who does.

We are in the grip of a pandemic. Most people who can are now working from home. Many of us are fortunate to have laptops and internet so that we can do this and stay connected with our colleagues, clients and networks. But how do we ensure that we maintain the quality of conversations and connections which we get when we meet-up in person?

As how many times have you had a meeting online which wasn’t actually that great? Perhaps the tech failed, perhaps we felt invisible and unheard, or perhaps we didn’t really show-up, as we were actually thinking about or doing something else at the same time. However to ensure that we don’t get left behind or isolated during this difficult time we now need to ensure that we DO run great virtual meetings. Make your zoom meetings as good as your physical ones!

Here are 10 team meeting ideas to ensure everyone thinks your next online zoom meeting is great:

1. Send a Good Invite. Send an agenda and clear joining instructions by email, in good time, with date, time and zoom link. So everyone knows what the meeting is all about, what to expect and how to join it. Send these by calendar invite as well as by email, so they are easy to find and access when needed. 
   
   
2. Send Reminders. So everyone remembers and actually shows up. Consider also sending reminders via FB messenger or Whatsapp or other social messaging platform the attendees might use. As the reason most people don’t show up is because they forget or double book.
   
   
3. Be Prepared. For people who aren’t used to using video calls then it might be useful to also provide some practical tips with the invite and also to go through these at the beginning of the call. Seth Godin suggests this simple 9 point checklist.
   
   
4. Be On Time. Make sure you are already there at least 5 minutes before everyone else arrives, to ensure everyone else can get in ok and to welcome them. Just like you don’t want to be the last one to arrive an offline meeting - well the same rules apply!
   
   
5. Start with a Check in. Invite everyone to share how they’re feeling, to make sure everyone is ok and feels supported. I always do this but it’s especially important now while people are feeling stressed and anxious. I like this article from Bethan Harris of Collectively where she shares useful virtual meeting tips as well as other ‘coping strategies’ for working from home and looking after your mental health: Loneliness and Homeworking 
   
   
6. Make it Fun. Consider using an icebreaker as well as a check-in. This is useful for a larger group or one where people don’t already know each other well. 5 Icebreakers for Distributed Team Meetings.
   
   
7. Have a Conversation. People hate meetings but they don’t hate conversations. I love Seth Godin’s daily blog, which always inspires me to see things differently. Here is his recent one: Let’s have a conversation instead* on how to make a virtual or zoom meeting, less about the meeting and more about the conversation.
   
   “A conversation involves listening and talking. A conversation involves a perception of openness and access and humanity on both sides.If you’re trapped in a room of fifty people and the organizer says, “let’s go around the room and have everyone introduce themselves,” you know you’re in for an hour of unhappiness. That’s because no one is listening and everyone is nervously waiting for their turn to talk. But if you’re in a conversation, you have to listen to the other person. Because if you don’t, you won’t know what to say when it’s your turn to talk.”
   
   
8. Use Breakout Rooms. This zoom function can help you to facilitate these conversations. The video Breakout Rooms allow the Zoom meeting host to create smaller groups within a larger meeting or training session.
   
   As the host you could speak for two minutes or ten minutes to establish the agenda and the mutual understanding, and then press a button to take everyone to break out rooms.They can have a conversation with one another about the topic at hand. Not wasted small talk, but detailed, guided, focused interaction based on the prompt you just gave them. 8 minutes later, the organizer can press a button and summon everyone back together.*
   
   
9. Get Feedback. Bring everyone back into the main meeting and get feedback from the groups to everyone else, just like you might in a larger physical meeting, but use the chat function to do this. Consider designing your agenda so you alternate this group feedback with more smaller break out conversations.
   
   
10. Allow Final Reflections. It is important to allow time for everyone to have an opportunity to reflect and also to agree on any actions and next steps. For small meetings ensure time for everyone to be heard or for larger meetings again do this via the breakout rooms.

Oh and one final top tip!

Only have a meeting if you actually need one! Would a memo or email be sufficient right now? As ever I’m with Seth Godin on this one,

“Only have a real-time meeting if it deserves to be a meeting. If you need people to read a memo, send a memo. If you need students to do a set of problems, send the problems. If you want people to watch a speech or talk, then record it and email it to them. Meetings and real-time engagements that are worthy of conversations are rare and magical.”Again I’ll leave it to the master Seth to have the final word here;

“If you want to do a lecture, do a lecture, but that’s prize-based education, not real learning. If people simply wanted to learn what you were teaching, they wouldn’t have had to wait for your lecture (or pay for it). They could have looked it up online.

But if you want to create transformative online learning, then allow people to learn together with each other. Connect them. Create conversations.”

– Seth Godin

I hope you find these tips useful, let me know how you get on and let me know about any others which you think should be there. [email protected]

So what is a Conscious Change maker? What does it mean to align your inner & outer worlds?

As my work gravitates towards supporting female change makers. I have been considering these questions alot recently and would like to share my thoughts with you here.

So what do I think it actually means?  An online search has brought up blogs from two other women, so I will incorporate some of their ideas here, while also exploring my own interpretation.

A conscious change maker is someone who is working to make a positive social and environmental impact in the world.

While also doing the inner work to make the changes within themselves too. In fact, the desired outer changes are not possible without the inner work.

A conscious change maker is someone who is seeking a spiritual path and is doing the inner work to help them grow and flourish. To be present and productive.

So, what are 10 clues that you are a conscious change maker?

 Your Intention to Love, no matter what, is the absolute Key to Happiness

– Robert Holden 

1. Choosing Love over Fear
   Making a conscious choice to choose love over fear is key to making change happen. While we are stuck in our fear based paradigm of judgement of each other and ourselves, then we will never be able to move on from the cycle of suffering which it brings.  I first really started to understand this, from listening to the wonderful Marianne Williamson, an American author, spiritual leader and activist. Her book A Return to Love made a massive impact on me – it’s based on her teachings from the self-study guide A Course in Miracles.  She explains how applying the principles of love to life can aid in healing and bring about personal transformation. 

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.

–Marianne Williamson

2. Having a strong sense of purpose  To know what your purpose is and for all of your goals and activities to be aligned with it. Your purpose is like a North Star which helps guide and keep you on track. It helps to ensure your time and energy is used in a productive way for the things you really care about. I think it’s around integrating your work with who you are and how you live your life. In the past our work has often been siloed from this. However being a conscious change maker is about bringing your work into the core of who you are and not being apologetic about that.

People are looking for confident leadership with clearly defined values, and that only comes from a clear sense of purpose, anchored in our core. Our core is the solar plexus area in our body, our power centre, our ‘sun’ centre. As the sun is a star, this is the star centre in our body!

Just as people have navigated by using the stars over millennia, we will guide people home by shining bright from our purpose. A conscious leader allows herself to shine her brightest light.

– Emily Johnsson, 9 attributes of a conscious leader 

3. Daily spiritual practices  To me being a conscious change maker involves having daily practices which help keep you aligned with my purpose. I have a Miracle Morning Routine with meditation, exercise, affirmations and visualisation which help me to stay focussed and on track. I also do regular yoga and body balance classes which are all about strengthening my core and staying present. As your fitness and wellbeing help you to stay focussed, disciplined and able.

4. Choosing to be happy now  You can decide at any time to live your life in a way which makes you happy. In a way which best resonates for you.  It may seem hard at times but your response to life, your attitude and how you show up, is always your choice, no matter what your situation. As WW2 concentration camp survivor Victor Frankl noted, “the last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Easy to say, hard to do when there are bills to pay and the whole economic landscape has changed. I know. I’ve been there too. But it’s been in those times, against all odds, when I’ve employed the power of deliberate intent using “high vibration” thinking, feeling and visualizing, that things have changed. It’s time to do so again. For all of us.

 Cheryl Brewster, Inspiring Conscious Changemakers

5. Knowing who you are going to serve  I think being a conscious change maker is about being clear on who you’re here to serve and aligning that with your purpose. The more that your work can be in service to those people, and to help them solve their specific problems, the more effective you will be at making change happen. Just ensure you do it in dialogue with them, that it’s in service to what they actually want and not through a top down or siloed approach. It’s about doing the work in a way that’s integrated and holistic.

6. Be present  I think being a conscious change maker is about always trying to be present. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle is a book which really blew me away. It’s all about the power of living in the present and how you can learn to do it. Through techniques like mindfulness and yoga, we can start to bring more presence into our life. Ekhart describes how living in the present moment is the key to developing a sense of profound bliss, love, and unity with everything in the universe. If this interests you I also recommend his more recent book The New Earth. Where he explores how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness, is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world.

Realise deeply that the present moment is all you have. 

Make the Now the primary focus of your life.

– Eckhart Tolle

7. Trusting your intuition  Being a conscious change maker means being tuned into and trusting your intuition. Meditation and prayer are two tools to help develop this skill. I like the idea that prayer is like asking for help – whether that be to the universe, God, the life force or your chosen deity – and that meditation is actually listening to the answer.  I like to get up early in the morning, as it’s a time when I can check-in and listen to my intuition more clearly.  It is a time when I feel clarity and when answers ‘appear’ to my current challenges and problems. There is a scientific explanation for this. As when we first wake up, we have theta brainwaves – which are a different frequency to those when we are conscious – which can help us access unconscious problem solving. In fact early in the morning – sometimes called the ‘witching hour’ – is a time of heightened connection to a more intuitive world.

8. Co-create & collaborate  Collaboration and community mindedness are keys to being a conscious change maker and helping achieve a sustainable world. To secure the future of our people and planet, we have to replace competition with collaboration.  The good news is that the overall response of people to the coronavirus pandemic was community-minded, we worked together to help and support each other through it. A positive outcome has been to step back from the busyness of our lives and instead start valuing those things which money can’t buy; time with family and in nature, creating and making instead of spending and consuming.  Now, more than ever, we need to continue living like this and see how we can use it as a blueprint to move forward.

9. Be Focussed  Being a conscious change maker involves being in service to the work and staying focussed on that. There are more distractions now than ever, so it’s vital to find ways to keep doing the deep work. To do this find routines which work for you e.g. switch off the wifi and smartphones, leave meetings and emails until later in the day; so you can do the deep focussed work when you are at your most productive.

Now is the time to say no to all distractions, noting that some of those distractions we have previously allowed because they were keeping us safe – in hiding. Every moment we allow distractions to have power over us, we are living out the energy of the old, limiting paradigm. Every moment we stay focused on our service and the higher purpose of our work, we are being the change. We allow ourselves to seek the support we need in small or big ways so that we can move forward in a state of flow. Focus equals flow equals impact.

– Emily Johnsson 

10. Cultivate a nature connection  Time spent in nature is always time well spent. In this busy, ultra wifi connected world, we need protected time where we can just switch off and immerse ourselves in nature. The more we can do this the more we can re energise, recharge and tap into our innate creative and intuitive abilities. I don’t see how this is possible without regular time spent immersing yourself in nature.  Whether a camping trip, a quick walk in the country or sitting under a tree in your local park, it’s all invaluable and is never time wasted.

So this is my initial public exploration of what it means to be a conscious change maker. How does this resonate for you? Do let me know. What do you think? What have I missed? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below or email: [email protected]