Speaker 1: Hey, this video is hot off the press. I am going to be sharing seven things that I actually did while facilitating a workshop last night for a big group of student leaders and staff at the University of California. I'm gonna share seven things that I did during that meeting to make their team meeting a little bit more fun. I'm gonna share them exactly as I did them so that you can actually cherry pick some of them to maybe infuse into your meeting. So if you are here to unpack how to make your virtual team meetings more fun, at the end of this video, you will have seven really clever strategies and ideas to be able to do that. And even if you pick two or three, the fun level and engagement level in your meetings will go up. And if it doesn't, you can email me and complain. But I highly doubt it. Let's get into it. I'm Chad and my job on the planet is working with some of the smartest organizations and top universities on the planet to help make virtual connection and engagement really easy. And so these seven things are not things that I just like tried once and maybe they work. They're rooted in research and trying them hundreds of times with thousands of people in a pixelated environment. So these strategies and ideas that I'm gonna share with you have been tested. You just need to tailor them to fit your team. If you have a big virtual conference or team meeting coming up and you're looking for somebody to come in and take the stress of creating a really connecting and engaging environment off you, check the link in the description. We give away a whole bunch of tools for free. And this is what I do. So there's also booking information as well. I believe that information is free and experiences is how I run my business. Number one, this is the what do you really know technique? And very simply, at the beginning of the meeting with University of California, before I even said hello, as the unofficial start, just as people were logging in, a few minutes before even the meeting started, I held up this question and I said, before I tell you anything that I know, I would love to know what is something you know really well and can you put that in the chat? And so right away, I'm starting to see things like baseball and somebody knew a lot about e-bikes and cheeseboards and some very random cool stuff, which opens up for lots of curiosity. And so as the host said, build a little bit of connection and trust right at the beginning at scale, because there was about 40 people on this call, I started asking, so ooh, Jesse, tell me about how you got to know a lot about cheeseboards and can you teach us one thing about it, right? So when I ask a question about what somebody knows really well, they're typically fairly comfortable talking about it because they know a lot about it. If I ask Jesse about astrophysics, that might be a little bit less interesting. And so the idea here is start off with a question that really leverages what people know and their expertise, because that spins off exponentially and trust me, it is way better than chatting about the weather wherever somebody is on the other side of the screen. Way more intentional and way more fun form of engagement. Number two is really counterintuitive. It is what I call the podcast mode technique. I think oftentimes when we meet virtually, we think that to have fun or to have higher engagement, we need people to have their videos on. Meeting and being on video with your team is normal. I would say that normal is just a cycle on a washing machine, so let's let that go. And this idea, this podcast mode technique is very simply invite everybody to turn their video off. So once everybody has their video off, you've officially entered what I call podcast mode. And this is really cool because one, you've shifted the norm from your team, so already people are paying attention. Brains are wired to pay attention to novelty. And so just doing something different spikes the level of fun and engagement that's happening in your group. Now for me, what I did at this workshop was, it was at the very beginning, I had everybody turn off their video, which was sweet also, by the way, that it leveled everybody on the same playing field because before, at the start, half people had their video on and half people had their video off, which is a pretty common dynamic when a meeting starts. And so now that everybody's on the same playing field, I talked about teleportation for a minute. And what I said is that to get here, all you did was click a Zoom link and boom, you teleported in. But I don't actually think you've teleported yet. I think you're part of the way there. You've started teleportation, but I actually think teleportation takes about 60 seconds. And my co-founder, Will and I, who we wrote this book together, Ask Powerful Questions, Create Conversations That Matter, when we have our heads screwed on straight and we're trying to create a conversation between ourselves that matters, so we're just having an internal meeting, we always start our meetings with 60 seconds of silence. And I am always shocked at the impact that that has to allow me to fully arrive into the room. When I say teleportation actually takes about 60 seconds, I'd say clicking into your Zoom link takes about three and then the next 57 seconds, or at some point in the very beginning, as a team taking that one minute to just do absolutely nothing. Don't grab the black box that lives in your pocket. Don't switch over to email tab and get one more email done. Just do nothing except for let your mind wander. And then when you're done, invite everybody to turn on their video and fully arrive. And this sounds like more meditative than it does fun, so for a video about how to make your virtual team meeting more fun, what I would say here is when everyone's really present and they've taken that minute to get really present, you will experience way more meaningful connection and fun and moments that are worth having in your meeting after that time. Whereas if you just start and you have somebody who teleported from just being in a fight with their son and somebody else who's still trying to scarf down their lunch, is that right? Everybody's coming from different contexts. You have to do something to have everybody arrive in the room at the same time. Number three, have people change their name on Zoom. And personally, I ask this question, what would your closest friends say is your best character trait? And I invite people to change their last name to whatever that word is. So I became Chad Curious. Somebody else became Ben Reliable. Somebody else in the group became Jesse Funny, right? And so now you've added some depth to Zoom by inviting people to rename. Not only are you learning a little bit about somebody, but you're also creating this level of depth and connection with that person that goes beyond just the pixels. Number four, shift your state. And in order to do this, what I actually invited people to do before I had them turn on their video when we were in podcast mode, I said, whatever position you're in, like check in with your body and see, like, do you need to stretch? Do you need to do something to shift your state so that you can really arrive and be present? And if you need to put on pants, go do that. And if you need to do your hair or lack thereof, do that. And then turn on your video. It's a really magical shift when you invite people to change their, or shift their state to actually be more present. Number five, take video breaks. So often we stay on video, especially in larger like team meetings or even team meetings of seven plus people, we stay on the call and we have our meeting on the whole time and it's really distracting. Like watching somebody else eat an apple doesn't make a meeting more fun necessarily. And so sometimes I invite people to take video breaks. Now that does cause our mind to wander a little bit, but for me, a video break is different than an actual break because you're staying there still, you're staying present. But the idea is that you turn off your video and you do something that will recharge or refuel you. So if that is stretch, if that is drink water, if that is eat an apple, whatever that is, that is your video break. Do something to recharge you, take a few minutes off video while the conversation is still going, while somebody is still sharing, just not to be so cognizant of how you look and how others look. Number six, I'm kind of jumping to the end here of the workshop that I led. I love doing all caps Q and A's. And what I mean by that is in any meeting, people probably have either questions or comments. And what I like to do is have people scream them. And so I invite people to find on their keyboard, the caps lock button, turn it on, and in the chat, type their question or comment into the chat in all caps, but don't press enter. And then on the count of three, one, two, three. That was confusing. One, two, three, enter. And all of these pop up at the same time. Somebody called, a previous client called it a super chat. There's something really cool about the chat just blowing up very quickly. You can do this for idea generating. So if you're trying to brainstorm, don't have people just verbally share. Start by doing some super chats and then jump into conversation. Way more fun, way more interesting. Another way to use this, the super chat, is to put up a slide and then say, type what strikes you about what you're seeing or reading right now. And then three, two, one, press enter. And then you get everybody's contribution and reaction without all the extra fluff and extra time. Seventh strategy for you. Now there are, I did hundreds of other things in this workshop, but here's just seven. The way that I closed was an exercise I call quotable closings. So I had been holding up throughout the session, several quotes to frame what we were doing and where we were going. At the end, what I pointed out was, isn't it kind of weird that usually quotes come from dead white guys? That's unfortunate. Why don't we create quotes? We're alive. We have brains. Can we actually be quotable? And so inviting people in the chat or to unmute and audibly share and create their own quote in the form of a closing statement or a takeaway or something they wanna share with the group. And so to create their own quotes and whatever they put, if they're putting in the chat, put it in quotes and put their name after it as if they were like on a plaque somewhere. And there's something about, I don't know why the human brain likes quotes, but there's something about turning something into something quotable that makes it more memorable, more sticky. And ideally, especially if you put a fun or humorous twist on this, makes your meeting a little bit more fun. If you like this video, you're gonna love the videos at the end here. And if you liked the questions that I was holding up or the quotes, there are free digital versions in the link below, weand.me slash free. And you can also get the actual decks shipped to your actual house or apartment or car in the links below. Super lovely hanging out in cyberspace with you today. Have an awesome day.