Inspo for Creativity and Collaboration in Virtual Meetings: #PaigesHair and Beyond

Author:

Insight

Virtual meetings come with their own set of challenges — namely, those related to creativity and collaboration.
We have ideas.

We tend to spend a good chunk of time at the beginning of most meetings analyzing #PaigesHair.

Yes, it’s that good: It totally deserves its own hashtag.

As you may know, our company has been virtual for 11 years, so this time of social distancing didn’t find us skipping a beat in terms of our work set-up. However, in “normal” life (aka pre-COVID quarantine), we did routinely see our clients in their offices and meet with one another at homes or in public places.

Translation: Hair mattered.

Since early March, we’ve been spending a lot more time not really worrying about pesky things like hair. And #PaigesHair — well, let’s just say it definitely has its own unique moods. And we enjoy dedicating time at the beginning of our meetings determining what exactly it’s currently trying to communicate.

This has become an ice-breaker of sorts, one that Paige (good sport that she is) has allowed to flourish in our own company culture.

We laugh. We cry. We name shapes it resembles, similar to when lying on the grass envisioning shapes in the clouds (not really, but we’re totally doing this next time).

So why are we sharing this insider secret with you? Because virtual meetings come with a certain set of challenges. And to address them, virtual teams still need abundant inspiration.

And yes, for us, it’s often #PaigesHair. Plus some other stuff.

Creativity and Collaboration in Practice

Virtual meetings and in-person meetings happen in very different physical spaces, but often because of the medium, we can forget that they need some of the same things in order to produce optimal results. Two challenges that often present themselves in remote meetings: an overarching lack of creativity and collaboration as a result of the very medium in which they’re occurring.

So since all y’all don’t have #PaigesHair like we do, we have some ideas for you.

We recently facilitated an NCET Biz Café session about this very topic, and if you missed it, here's the link. In it, you’ll learn specific tips for collaborating in a virtual environment, as well as sources of creative inspiration.

And we also put together a handy guide with all kinds of resources — like where to go for inspiration, how to brainstorm together and methods of ice-breaking that are just plain fun (we’re trying origami next!).

So in the interest of effective collaboration with you, our trusty reader, here are some of those resources. Because you deserve them, too.

Team-Building, Ice-Breakers and Book Love

Ideas for virtual team-building activities:

51 Fun Virtual Team Building Activities For Remote Teams (includes ideas about origami!)
18 Easy Virtual Team Building Activities for Remote Teams
The best virtual team building activities, according to real remote workers (featuring gif battles!)
15 Virtual Team Building Activities To Level-Up Your Remote Team
15 Outstanding Virtual Team Building Games and Activities to Enrich Remote Work
5 Virtual Team Building Activities That Work

Ideas for virtual ice breakers:

A few books about creativity (we recommend searching for these locally if/when we can return to bookstores, but in the meantime, here are Amazon links):

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon
Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business by Kindra Hall
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kaheneman
Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod
Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel (recommended by Jon Edmondo during our presentation!)

If you’d like more ideas: Feel free to email or call our fearless leader, Edward. He has been busy the last few weeks pitching in with friends and clients as a virtual guru in these days of remote work, given his exhaustive institutional knowledge of transitioning a bricks-and-mortar company to 100-percent virtual all those years ago.

And in parting, we hope you enjoyed your peek above at just one example of our daily inspo.

Alas, #PaigesHair is a sight to behold.

Mikalee Byerman is VP of Strategy for the Estipona Group and devoted admirer of #PaigesHair. So much so, in fact, that they see the same hair stylist. Like, seriously. Email her with questions about creativity, collaboration, or even if you’d like contact info for this amazing stylist.

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