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Innovative Meeting Formats To Foster Productive Remote Teams

Innovative Meeting Formats To Foster Productive Remote Teams

If you're looking for ways to engage your remote teams on a deeper level and enhance collaboration, you're at the right place.

Workplace meetings are a great opportunity to connect, collaborate, and communicate with your team members. They bring a sense of accountability among people working towards a shared goal. That said, no one wants to attend a dull and mentally draining meeting. This is where the meeting hosts must step up to launch innovative meeting formats.

Especially in remote teams, it’s important to give everyone a fair chance to express their creativity so they can contribute their best and bring efficiency to the team. The traditional meeting formats rarely allow people to bring their A-game. There’s too less time and not everyone gets to say what they came for, or worse, no agenda and too much time.

If you’re looking for ways to engage your remote teams on a deeper level and enhance collaboration, you’re at the right place.

7 Innovative Meeting Formats To Revamp Your Team’s Productivity

Introduce the following creative meeting formats to leverage every team member’s active participation to realize your organizational goals.

Creative learner’s space

This innovative meeting format begins with preparing a meeting agenda. The members choose a few topics to learn, and the meeting facilitator starts the discussion around these topics. The discussion items can be related to their weekly tasks or personal projects based on the last employee development conversation.

The meeting facilitator must have the list of the selected topics in advance to plan the meeting and present valuable thought-provoking insights. This learning-based meeting format widens every participant’s knowledge. It opens up a creative space the participants ask, answers, and contribute to growing mutually in this learner’s space.

Goalfest meetup

Goalfest is a self-evaluating innovative meeting format designed by Joel Califa. It focuses on enhancing the active participation and visibility of every member.

The team members use a shared Google Spreadsheet to declare their goals for the entire week and then score their performances for the previous week between 1 to 5. The spreadsheet also has a “lesson learned” section, which filters the effective patterns from the ones that don’t work for the team.

The Goalfest method inculcates a sense of belonging and accountability among the participants. This format also ensures the meeting becomes as valuable for each member as it is for the team manager.

The innovative power-up meeting format

This meeting format is all about highlighting the progress and milestones achieved by the team members. It’s based on a 2011 study by Kramer and Amabile on the Power of Small Wins. The researchers observed that even the smallest progress profoundly enhances the motivations, emotions, and perceptions of members and directly influences the work life of the entire team.

Now it has become popular among several companies to acknowledge and celebrate each member’s small wins. These power-up meetings allow everyone to reflect on their progress and feel valued within the company.

Flipped learning using tech

This is a classroom-inspired meeting format businesses implement to have better productive sessions. The team members get the relevant learning material for the topic of an upcoming meeting in advance. It makes them well-equipped with the learning resources before the discussion.

The idea here is to help the team members come prepared for the meetings. This innovative meeting format involves the use of technology to share resources like online videos, progress reports, or other important metrics to tackle a relevant problem hands-on.

Pro tip: Use Loopin to eliminate switching between applications or tools to access and share files. You can integrate email, Slack, Notion, etc., by installing Loopin to share different formats of learning resources with your team.

Internal note-taking gathering

Note-taking meetings are all about reflecting on internal challenges at the departmental and organizational levels. It begins by creating small teams for each department where members discuss the challenges within the group.

Later, the people from these different groups come together to discuss issues and obstacles at the company level.

This is one of the innovative meeting formats that enhance team dynamics and allows everyone to suggest ideas to resolve organizational challenges. It keeps everyone focused on prioritizing the company’s growth by using their problem-solving and decision-making skills. You can use Loopin to make meeting notes straight on your calendar during an ongoing meeting, and share them with your team with a single click.

Game-on technique

You can create maximum engagement within a meeting by introducing gamification strategies. It involves rewarding points to members for participating in activities like asking questions, sharing opinions, suggesting solutions, etc.

This innovative meeting format keeps the attendees highly motivated throughout the session. You can also use this technique to add fun elements to your virtual meetups. It encourages remote team members to present their creative energies. Gamification helps the entire team to gain insightful feedback and solution and ensures maximum participation.

Dare-to-ask meeting format

The dare-to-ask session is all about brainstorming and encouraging team members to ask questions. The meeting facilitator must offer a supportive and safe space to the attendees to carry out an open and honest discussion.

Share the meeting agenda in advance so the members can come with their valuable questions and make the most of this session. This innovative meeting format allows your direct report to feel supported and valued. Such discussions are best to foster participation and find creative solutions for the concerned challenges.

Final Words

Team leaders must update traditional meetings to thrive in this fast-paced business environment. Today, most teams work remotely and hardly get time to connect personally. This makes it inevitable for managers to introduce innovative meeting formats and find what works best for their team.

Here’s a list of the top 6 creative meeting formats to make your business meetings collaborative and productive.

  1. Creative learner’s space
  2. Goalfest meetup
  3. The innovative power-up meeting format
  4. Flipped learning using tech
  5. Internal note-taking gathering
  6. Game-on technique
  7. Dare-to-ask meeting format

All of these meeting formats are highly effective. They result in building collaborative, open, and motivated teams. Feel free to experiment with these innovative meeting formats to find out what works best for your team.