I often make my grocery list or my after-work to-do list while pretending to take notes in a meeting.
I often make my grocery list or my after-work to-do list while pretending to take notes in a meeting.
At my last company, I removed the chairs from my group's conference rooms, and that improved Meeting Culture immensely.
I did the opposite to Bae. I had my meetings in the (software) lab. I brought in a tablecloth that was plastic but looked like a grandma's lace tablecloth. I'd bring a pot of tea for refreshments. Since I had mostly men in my group, they were uncomfortable lingering in this sort of environment, so my meetings were all business and went very quickly. LOL.
I had a boss (in engineering) who was used to dealing with our type of more interesting engineers. When she'd start the meeting, she'd dump a small bin of interesting children's toys (puzzles, Hoberman spheres, things to fiddle with) onto the middle of the table.
Most of the engineers would grab a toy sooner or later, fidget with it, and be able to focus/concentrate better on the meeting :-)
It was sort of brilliant.
Bae, that is totally my work environment in OST programming! We obviously need fidgets, and team builders and ice breakers and games. Since this is what we expect staff to do with kids it is normal to have this in our meetings. We don't hire people who like to sit a lot, I can't sit a lot. When I had a month before school started I barely made it until 3 in the office and then I just had to leave and work at home.
I do more training than meetings, I tend to read the people and adjust. My front line staff need fidget toys and movement. My meetings with colleagues have lots of visuals. Today we talked about a training coming up with some complicated rotations and I put together a chart on the white board, moved things around, encouraged people to come up and add to it. The only long sitting training I do is mindfulness, the guided sitting practice.
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