Category: News

The infamous creative block.  

That moment when you receive a new client brief with vague information, huge expectations, next-to-no budget and an unrealistic deadline. The time is 9.01. The first coffee hasn’t even scratched the surface of your functioning caffeine threshold. You know it’s time to get creative with your response. But the cogs in that space between your ears just aren’t functioning. You start to feel tense. Your heart starts racing. It’s fight or flight.  

Sound familiar? *Gulp* 

Okay, so I may have exaggerated some of those points, but that’s the creative block in a nutshell. It’s an unpleasant experience, to say the least, and one that as a Creative, you want to avoid at all costs. Working in a fast-paced creative communications agency has helped me pick up a few nifty tips and tricks that give me creative inspiration to prevent such ‘blockage’ (ew), which I’m going to share with you – being the generous person that I am. 
Buckle up, grab a brew and hang in tight. Here’s my four top tips for creative inspiration… 

One: Idols 

Idols. We all have them, but what about idols specifically within the creative industry? That’s a whole new kettle of fish. Having creative idols that produce and create works that amaze you can be hugely inspirational. Artists, sculptors, designers, art directors, photographers, you name it. There are so many inspirational figures out there in the field of creativity that can inspire your next project or proposal with their work. For me personally, it’s Virgil Abloh, the founder of clothing giant Off-White and Creative Director of the Luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton, and Daniel Arsham, sculptor, artist, visionary and Porsche 911 enthusiast, both of whom have a huge social following. But your inspiration could be any creative person, big or small. My challenge to you: pick up to three creatives within the industry that you’re interested in following. Once or twice a week, have a browse of their social handles and websites, or if you know them personally, why not get in contact? Keep track of what new weird and wonderful ideas they’re generating and see if you can unpick any elements of them to inspire the creative idea for your project. 

Two: Exercise 

You may be cursing at me from behind your laptop screen at the fact I’m suggesting you exercise to be more creative. “How will exercise improve my levels of creativity?”, I hear you ask. Well, there’s actually science behind it; just earlier this year, author and health/fitness reporter Gretchen Reynolds reported a scientific discovery that found “active people come up with more and better ideas during tests of their inventiveness than people who are relatively sedentary.”  
In my own experience, I’ve found that taking up running has been hugely beneficial not only to my physical and mental wellbeing, but also great for generating creative ideas too, as my mind isn’t clouded by other thoughts and worries when I’m channelling my focus on exercise. Why don’t you give it a try in your spare time and see what creative ideas come to you? 

Three: Smart scrolling 

It can be easy to lose an hour or more with what was meant to be a ‘5-minute thumb scroll’ on your phone. What I’m proposing is ‘smart scrolling’, which is exactly what it sounds like… be smart with your scrolling. How does it work? Simply swap out the mindless scrolling through photos of your mates out on the weekend for content that will inspire you creatively. Hop onto YouTube and check out the latest film trailers and music videos. What techniques did the film crew apply? What was done in the edit suite that made the content exciting and engaging to watch? How was the thumbnail designed to draw you in? By re-framing the purpose of your social scrolling, you can be smart with your time and be both entertained and creatively inspired simultaneously. The same applies to the Ads that bombard you online. Think about why they were shown to you specifically, what the key call-to-action was, how the copy was laid out and what colours were chosen to grab your attention. Next time you scroll, try this technique and, if you want to go a step further, why not add your findings to a Pinterest boardor scrapbook folder on your desktop to save for a rainy day when those creative cogs aren’t turning? 

Four: And breathe… 

This final top tip may seem ridiculously obvious but it’s crucially important. This is all about time; give yourself enough time and breathing space to allow those amazing creative ideas to develop. Brilliant concepts need time and space to flourish, so make sure you budget enough time to allow for this. A great technique is booking ‘focus time’ in your diary: where you don’t have any meetings, don’t accept unimportant incoming calls or emails and can focus solely on developing the creative idea. Another is taking regular breaks throughout the day, where for a short period of time you switch your focus to a completely different activity. It’s an opportunity to recharge and refuel so that you have a clear mind to come back, boss your brief and create something amazing. 
… And that’s it! My top four tips that almost anyone can do in their spare time to keep their creativity ticking along in the background, always on standby for when that challenging brief lands in their inbox, ready to create a wow-worthy response.  
If you stayed to read the whole article, here’s a bonus feature from me to say thank you… 

Extra tips: Useful websites for inspiration 

• The Drum
• Marketing Week
• Behance
• Famous Campaigns
• Creative Review
• D&Ad

Ruan Sarris 
Creative at DRPG, creative communications group 

People are working hard and times feel tough. Surely it’s time for a break? And yet, for a lot of people they’re just not booking any annual leave?

Of course, there could be reasons for this, (cost of living crisis anyone?) It can also be that teams who love what they do, work hard and are passionate about the mission you’ve created might just feel a little too committed to work.

Your job as a manager or leader? To get them out the door and on a break.

Woah! Surely if they don’t want to go, and they’re happy at work then we should just let them continue to be amazing and help the business, right? Wrong.

Read on to find the 5 reason you really should be making sure everyone gets a decent holiday, and you might be surprised at the payback it gets you.

THEY’LL PERFORM BETTER WHEN THEY GET BACK

When team take regular holidays, they generally come home more motivated about their work and go on to perform better than those who don’t take as much holiday. They’re also less likely to have an accident in the work environment. Who knew? Guess what? They’re also likely to have lower stress levels too which can in turn help levels of sickness and absence.

IT GIVES THEM CHANCE TO REST THEIR BRAINS

A holiday can provide the perfect opportunity to catch up on sleep. We all need a few extra ZZ’s, but the brain needs a time out too. Life is full on, and we forget that our brains are on, almost all the time even when we’re not aware of it. A holiday can lighten the load. A lack of sleep and stressed our brain are big contributing factors to decreased performance at work, and potentially, if not addressed could affect a team members mental health further down the road.

IT’LL PROVIDE A WELCOME BOOST TO WELLBEING

When the team book, and then get their annual leave approved it gives them a sense of achievement that they have worked hard to be given the time off. Yes, we know they’re entitled to it, but there’s that strange satisfaction to knowing you earned that break, and it is yours to take. Anything that helps your team feel valued works in your business’s favour as they will feel motivated to come back to work and perform effectively.

IT SHOWS YOU ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT THEM

When you practically encourage your team to take holiday, perhaps even by doing so yourself, it shows them its ok to do so, and releases the pressure for those most committed to work. It’s important to help show them the benefits of taking a break, and why you want them to do it, in whichever way suits them. Great practice here is ensuring they know a break means a break and no emails on the beach or calls in the hotel room are allowed. Empower them to ‘switch off’ and reap the rewards or working hard.

YOU CAN EASILY RE-ENERGISE YOUR TEAM             

When you create a work environment where your team work hard, and play hard, it means you have the luxury of bringing back that passion, energy and enthusiasm that a refreshed, well rested team member brings back to the workplace. Remember, behaviour is contagious, so having that kind of energy bouncing around is priceless. Happy teams work harder, better and faster so why would you not want to help create that?

SO, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Check those annual leave spreadsheets and see who is holding back. It’s perfect holiday season so see who you can actively encourage to take a break first.

Whether you’re coaching for performance, to have a brilliant conversation or to help someone grow, using a guide of carefully curated coaching questions will always make life easier.

We’re giving these away for free by simply clicking and downloading the file below.

Enjoy!

“Be yourself and they’ll love you” is advice that many of us will have received over the years – be it ahead of a job interview, a date or first day of school. And it is fabulous advice, as long as you know what ‘being yourself’ is. 

If you don’t it’s a bit like being told to ‘walk naturally’ or ‘stand naturally’ – your brain immediately goes into overdrive. “Is this how I normally move my legs? Do I normally swing my arms this much? When did my hands become such a big part of my body?”

But at the same time, when we’re in safe environments where we can be ourselves and relax into us ‘at our best’ life is so much easier, and we don’t really think about it at all. 

So, what makes for a safe environment – often one in which we have clarity and parameters? 

And how do we do this when we are an organisation rather than an individual? An organisation full of individuals who we want to both be themselves and represent us at the same time? Tricky right?

So we could give everyone a really long list of what to say when they answer the phone, how to dress, and murder their autonomy, creativity and drive with processes and procedures. But don’t forget the twice monthly quiz to fulfil our social needs! 

I jest of course, although for many organisations this is the only way they have entertained a balance between consistency of their brand and a ‘good’ culture, the reason often being that they don’t know what they really are at their best as a whole. And there is no shame in this – many businesses grow and grow fast so what may have started as a really clear founder led definition or ‘sense’ of them is diluted overtime and / or doesn’t take into consideration the new perspectives or market changes. It happens all the time. 

If we define what the organisations is, truly, at its best, embrace it, embed it throughout all we do and endeavour to live it we may just crack it. 

So, let’s pause for a sec – and as L’Oréal cringely used to say – here comes the science bit! 

Why does it matter that this definition of the organisations at its best is authentic – why can’t we just make it up based on what we know our customers want us to be?

Well in a 2017 study 90% of millennials said that authenticity was a key driver in their decision to support a brand. And don’t be fooled that it’s just these youngsters – GenX and Boomers followed closely behind with 85% and 80% respectively saying the same thing. 

A 2019 study also showed that brand authenticity has a substantial effect on perceived value and brand trust.

But no, you can’t fake it – a third of respondents said that they had turned away from brands that they perceived to be inauthentic – to say one thing in their marketing and behave in a different way. 

Think of it as a friend being two faced. You are loyal to them but once they are two faced, you start to question your relationship, the trust is gone and with it your investment in them and your friendship. #over

So, now we’ve established why it needs to be authentic for customer loyalty let’s consider why it’s also a huge engagement and performance driver internally – reducing waste and increasing buy-in from colleagues. It’s back to the point that we started with, it’s much easier to be yourself in a safe space, with clarity and parameters. 

When a company or an individual can easily define what they are like ‘at their best’, it makes it way easier for the people around them to do the same. It helps others know how to act, feel and respond because they get ‘it’. They get the culture and brand they are dealing with. 

A Glib Example:

Sammy’s Gin Company strives to make the best possible Gin. (Ok that’s great, so what?)

So that people really enjoy it and have a great time. (Ok so do we care about great Gin or them having a great time?)

Ok, so maybe actually we want to make great Gin because we take pride in quality but what really matters to us is that people have a great time. And actually, we know that people have a great time in many different ways so we don’t want to stipulate that they can only drink it in certain way – we want them to do whatever they want with it – we are not precious! (Brilliant, getting more of a feel of who you are and what’s important to you now, sounds like my kinda Gin!)

Therefore, externally we are going to talk about “Gin for a great time, whatever a great time looks like to you.”

That’s the marketing sorted but that’s just one segment of our brand, for it to be authentic it needs to be right through us. Our leadership needs to have a conversation about what ‘a great time, without compromising on quality’ means to them. 

If we look at our suppliers – do they have a great time with us, or do we make their lives hell? Are our payment terms outrageous meaning they are always balancing and nudging us?

Do our colleagues produce quality work and have a great time doing it? If not, what’s stopping them? When we delve into it, we may find that they want more freedom, more direction, more clarity, less pressure and stress. Unrealistic targets may be a barrier to a great time which is then a wider conversation to understand why the targets are unrealistic. Our working environment may be a barrier to a great time – tiny offices, bad lighting or uncomfortable chairs. Our holiday allowance may be a barrier, a lack of anything bar statutory sick pay may cause anxiety and be a barrier to a great time.

You get the picture. 

And, if we look at our environmental impact, do we deliver a great time for people now and in the future? Are our bottles recyclable or will they stand in the way of future generations having a great time? Are our corks actual cork or are they a plastic look-a-like?

Once we as an organisation start to demonstrate the meaning of ‘a great time, without compromising on quality’ our people will begin to understand it and use it as the filter through which they too make decisions. It allows people to experiment and innovate within parameters that we have all agreed to and in doing so gives them accountability and responsibility – and a shared focus. 

In this case this isn’t a great time doing whatever you fancy, quality is in the mix too which helps to keep our team realistic as well as idealistic.

In defining ‘quality’ and our belief of what constitutes or is a barrier to ‘a great time’ we can rethink our internal strategies and the drivers of the business. 

Some might call this a vision, a purpose, a mission or a brand promise – in all honesty call it what you like and frame it as you like – as long as when something tough comes along you stand by it, through thick and thin. Because the moment you make a decision that contradicts it you’ve lost. You’ve lost your integrity; you’ve lost your people and you may lose your customers too.

But don’t focus on the risk – focus on the potential! 

Unearth what you are at your best or what it is you are truly trying to do. 

Embrace it, Embed it and Live it. Simple as that! 

You can learn more about our Guest Blog writer, Sammy Burt and what she does by clicking here. https://www.yourbackpack.co.uk/

Who would have thought starting a new job in the middle of a global pandemic would have been a good idea? For many people it made sense to just stay put. Well, I’m not many people and it turns out, in my case it was totally the right decision for me. I have zero regrets.

Back in March 2021 I took the leap and started in a new learning & development role at the global phenomenon that is Gymshark.

I’d luckily had a great head start in L&D, and I had already started to fall in love with helping others learn and develop. But this time, a new job, in a pandemic, in a completely new environment, and a new company, and a new sector with a very new style and most terrifying of all. New people. You’re probably starting to get my drift!

Tackling the nerves.

My biggest nerves before starting my new role were not being able to forge those all-important connections which set you up for success in the organisation. How on earth was this going to work when I was at home, and they were on a screen?

By the end of my first day, these thoughts didn’t even cross my mind. You quickly begin to forget how you’re working & building relationships with people you’ve never met in real life. Virtual communications saved the day and helped me go from nerves to excitement and engagement.

Onboarding in a virtual world.

The key message of the onboarding process was to take your time, understand the business & get to know your team. This, along with plenty of introductions, catch-ups & virtual tea-breaks created a platform for these connections to grow. Now, with me being nearly 5 months into the role, I can say with 100% confidence that the rapport that has developed is some of the strongest I’ve ever had in a work environment, and for me, is quite literally priceless.

The best bits about starting a job during lockdown are all the perks that come along with working from home. No commute, flexible hours and all that jazz. What I found added the greatest value in my induction period was having more time to digest all the information that is heading your way when you’re the new boy. It really helped me to ensure that I had time to really ‘get it’.

Unexpected benefits.

An unexpected (yet golden benefit) was meeting people with one added extra. Their names were in the bottom corner of each screen making it easy for me…and meant no awkward forgotten name moments.

However, I wasn’t complaining when URL transitioned into IRL. I was amazed by Gym Shark HQ. The building, the workspaces…and don’t even get me started on REFUEL the amazing in-house food and drink hub. The first day in the office really solidified my comfort in my decision & my role.

Culture makes it work.

The culture at Gymshark is just as you expect; authentic, honest & ever evolving. For me, the most monumental part of the Gymshark culture is ‘fail fast’. Feel safe in the environment which you’re in, so much so that you’re happy to make mistakes. This helps us learn and evolve. This one has been key ?.

My advice?

In summary, and not to steal some other sporting companies’ strapline, just do it.

You will always have nerves, you will always have self-doubt, but for me, I found it the best time to make my leap, supported by strong inductions, an incredible culture, and the benefits of working at home, and then in a hybrid role. Embrace it. Absorb it. Enjoy it.

Time has been feeling weird for a long time now, but in the last few months, it’s been a whole different kind of weird.

Some days go by so fast they barely register and then some days, you know the ones, they simply drag like time is almost standing still. There are days when I find myself thinking ‘where has this day gone’, but also, why does this day feel so familiar? You’ll all have felt this. It’s the dreaded Groundhog Day effect. 

Before I continue, I know I’m not the only one experiencing time very differently, and I’m acutely aware that millions of others don’t have work at all – in that sense, many of us literally do just have more time on our hands than usual.

The very concept of time doesn’t feel normal anymore…and apparently (after jumping into google and reading up about this) if you feel like I do, then I have some good news. It’s okay to feel like this!

It’s completely normal to feel life right now has warped our perception of how days, week and months pass by. We can all breathe a deep sigh of relief as we realise it’s actually a ‘thing’.

My initial research told me that there are many psychological processes that make up our understanding of time, and this then affects the way we see the world. Here’s one for you. How is it that January this year felt like the longest month ever and then February disappeared before our eyes?

Once again, I googled some more, and found myself spiralling down a rabbit warren of cognitive neuropsychologist science. In essence, what they say is that the things that we tend to use as ‘anchors’, to mark the passing of time or a specific place in your memories, have no longer been occurring, (because our world has changed so dramatically) which then contributes to this altered perception of time that we are all experiencing right now.

Look at it like this. Think of all those events we had to cancel in 2020. The well-earned summer holidays, the summer weddings, the birthdays, the travel, shopping till you drop (maybe that’s just me) going to the office, doing our jobs and all the normalities that changed overnight leaves us feeling lost, because nothing of value or interest really separates one month to the next.

We simply stopped making our anchors.

So, there must be a reason for this disorienting sense that time is malleable and inconsistent. Right?

In my reading and research, those same clever neuroscientists have worked out that there is not a single organ or system in the body responsible for timekeeping. In fact, psychologists have identified many factors that affect our sense of time, some of which explain our heightened awareness of it this year.

It’s been suggested that the way we feel time is passing is connected with our level of focus or our physical state and even our mood.  So, if we’re multitasking, and we’re busy with many different things at once, we have less attentional resources to monitor the passing of time, which means we might feel that it’s passing more swiftly.

Unsurprisingly; it’s been suggested that particularly negative emotional events can change the way in which we remember the timing of them. In fact, negative emotional events may even actually produce a time dilation effect, (which sounds like something from The Matrix) but it means that you perceive the time is passing much more slowly, We have all been through something awful, and we all remember how long it seems to last. So after all that, the weird passing of time in the last year isn’t just a quirk or you losing your mind. It’s more likely that something is going on, deep inside your brain, to alter how you experience the time.

This article just scratches the surface of understanding how we perceive time and it’s relation to our emotions and behaviour, and we haven’t even touched on the impact of Mercury being in retrograde!

So what have I done to help myself? I’ve found focusing on becoming more self-aware has helped me. I’ve been looking at how I perceive time, not only in different moments, but also for different situations and for different things that play on my mind. It takes practice, but I’m starting to spot some of the research I’ve shared with you in my own behaviours.

In summary, whether you’re feeling time is going too fast, too slow or simply too repetitive; you are not alone and you are normal. 

As we all become more self-aware, we develop the process of unlearning and relearning something different in order to survive and thrive in this new normal.  Our usual anchors may be missing at the moment, to help break up our days, so it’s up to us to actively shape our own years and rebalance our perception of time.

My final thought? As you find yourself progressing through 2021, be aware of the ‘illusion of time’. It might just be playing tricks on you.

Aysha Haynes

You can learn more about Aysha here.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aysha-haynes/

ARE YOU SPOTTING THE SIGNS OF WORK FROM HOME BURN OUT?

Let’s face it. 2020 was a year to be remembered, or forgotten, depending on your experiences!

The amount of enforced change that we experienced was unheard of, and yet we’re still here, working hard and, more importantly, working remotely into 2021 and we are nearly at the half year point already!

Around the world millions of people made the very quick transition from an office to remote working and whilst some of us out there will have experienced this before, for many, it was something completely new, and in some cases, terrifying.

Dependant on the company you work for, their culture, their technology and their degree of future focus the experience of remote working has been vastly different for most people.

In a lot of cases employers started to panic about the simple fact – is the work going to still get done?

In reality, for the most part, it needn’t have been a concern. Productivity is linked to wellbeing and remote working for a lot of people has boosted the latter, therefore driving the former.

Obviously, this isn’t the picture for everyone, and we recognise that. Remote working doesn’t fit everyone’s lifestyles.

However, for those who are delivering the same, if not more, whilst working at home, there’s something else employers should be concerned about more than a drop in productivity.

THEY NEED TO BE LOOKING FOR WORKING FROM HOME BURNOUT.

This is not a drill. This is real. The risk that this will happen is high. Remember that oh so controversial song, Blurred Lines? That is what is happening now because the line between work time and home time is disappearing fast.

For some it’s the fact that they don’t have an office and seeing work equipment keeps their work brains always on.

For others they are feeling the fact their employers are focused on productivity and they don’t want people to think they’re not working. So, they work more.

Routines like breaks, lunch, meetings, chats by the coffee machine – they have all disappeared leaving only work in their place. Yes, we have Teams or Zoom, but it’s simply not the same. We don’t mean for a second that your working day should be all gossip, chit chat and eating, but it helps you strike a healthy balance, one that is being lost at home.

There is tons of research out there that repeatedly tells us that we must keep our work and personal lives separate. It is hard enough already to switch off after a particularly hard day, but when there is no escape it can have a profound effect on our mental health too.

In some cases, you as an employer. will start to spot burn out. You need to start looking for the signs.

Always on. Late night replies. Teams replies. Working through lunch. Frustration. Irritability. They might start making mistakes or taking longer to do work than before. It’s vital that you catch it early.

We’ve done the hard work for you and come up with 4 simple tips to help you stop working from home burn out affecting your team.

ONE. LEAD FROM THE FRONT

Your team are guided by you, they copy how you behave. You need to model the behaviour that you seek.

If you reply late at night, if you skip lunch, if you never say no then the chances are, you’re creating an army of followers that will do the same. If your team is particularly loyal, they may also see this as helping you and won’t want to let you down. Set some rules for the team and get buy in about what you think is fair and acceptable when remote working is in effect. Share them, review them, and most importantly stick to them.

For example, if you must send a late-night email, then change your signature to say that you choose to work at this time, but you don’t expect others to respond. A small message like that goes a long way to keep the culture on track.

Don’t do the very things you want them to avoid or it’s going to be a noticeably clear case of mixed messages!

TWO. LET THEM KNOW IT’S OK TO FLEX

Many people working from home are trying to replicate the work routine and structure, especially those with childcare to consider. Guess what? It doesn’t work. Think flexibility with the team and let them know its ok not to be sat at their computer at exactly 9am if they’re still getting a child into school or setting up children with activities. You must focus on the work that gets done, not the exact times it happens.

Make sure they know that they can take lunch, that its ok to grab 5 minutes, to walk the dog, to collect their food shopping, because if they cut all those things out for work, the remaining things bump over into personal life…and it won’t fit, and then stress becomes a factor, which takes us back to burn out.

THREE. FOCUS ON THE IMPORTANT STUFF

You do not want a team of busy fools. You need to help them prioritise if they cannot do it themselves. Help them see that its ok to not work on everything at once, that its most likely 3-4 hours will be one big chunk of work and the rest of the day will be smaller tasks, or multi-tasking and that there are times it’s ok to not be actually doing something. Thinking, reflecting, analysing, deciding…these things all take time too.

Working flat out, 9-5, day after day is not healthy and once again, will lead your team to burn out.

FOUR. BUILD GOOD HABITS

Set up a regular time that its ok to be social. Consider virtual coffee breaks, a virtual team lunch, a quiz, a birthday sign song. Factor these in and make them become healthy habits. It’s a clear sign from the leader that it’s time to stop, it’s time to let work go, and it’s time to relax a little.

Make sure you attend where appropriate, always ask people what they did in the evening or at lunch and continually build the belief that its ok not to be working all the time. We suggest you work with your team to encourage ownership of this, so that it’s their thing not yours.

IN SUMMARY

If you don’t want your team to suffer from working from home burn out then try to spend a few minutes now, thinking about what you just read, and see if you can spot the signs (in them, or even in yourself) and try to implement at least one of our 4 tips.

Remember – your team are looking to you to care for and nurture them, regardless whether you’re in the office or not.

Have you noticed the rise of emojis in learning?

They’ve been around for ages, helping us to get across our feelings with funny faces and ROFL but they hadn’t quite transitioned over to learning, until now.

Our visiting friend, COVID19, has helped these cheeky little digital icons make the jump from messaging to webinars. Both Zoom and Teams are now incorporating them as instant indicators of how a learner is enjoying (or not) the session you’re delivering.

They can tell you to slow down, to go back, to speak up and even just give you some love for that last bit of learning.

As a trainer, this is essential when you cannot see everyone’s faces, but it also helps delegates to express their emotions in a scenario that doesn’t feel quite normal yet. 

Instant, visual, engaging feedback.

We’re loving that we get instant, digital and easy to understand feedback at the exact moment a learner feels it. For us, it boosts engagement, keeps us on track and helps the group see when the lightbulb moments are happening. We’re loving this at Well Prepared Training and are incorporating into our chat activities and methods of learning and feedback.

But, the most important question of all, which emoji would you choose? Ours has to be the LOVE emoji…who can resist those hearts for eyes!

By now pretty much every organisation will have given into the power of a screen for a meeting, catch up, training session or information download. They arrived in a virtual flash, like a knight on a white horse, galloping into our lives and saving the proverbial day. Fast forward to 2021 and they’ve been with us for some time now, taking over our lives in both work and social situations.

It’s starting to become a little less ‘hero’ and a little more ‘frenemy’,

No article these days is complete without a little data. The Harvard Business School recently completed some excellent research and we’ve taken inspiration from it for this piece.

By the end of this post, we think we’ll have given you a glimmer of hope to help you reignite some va-va-voom into your za-za-zoom by using the lost art of telling great stories.

Anyway, back to the study, which polled over 3 million people across 16 global cities and came back with one resounding fact (that likely won’t really shock you).

Since March 2020, the average workday has increased and we’re attending more meetings than ever before!

The research found that we’re working on average nearly 50 minutes! (or 8.2%) per day in the new world which we’ve found ourselves in.

Those extra meetings we’re all attending? For most of us, it’s an extra 2 a week being squeezed into our schedules (but for some many more as suspected micro-managing kicks in).

The way we are experiencing these meetings? Yep, you’ve guessed it, most of them are courtesy of our knight in slightly tarnished armour, the virtual screen.

What you’ll undoubtedly start seeing soon, if not already, is the start of ‘screen fatigue’. Each meeting becomes an led powered blur, your eyes begin to tire under the strain to constantly make eye contact. The need to look engaged and interested is essential now there’s no longer an escape from the ever-present glassy gaze of the camera.

A single flinch, a suspect eye roll, a pensive lip bite, or even just a quick distracted gaze out the window can now give the wrong message to every other person in a meeting. Just. Like. That.

You’ll be finding by now that people are less and less remembering to try to engage others in a virtual meeting. The initial flurry of ice breakers, challenges, check-ins, polls, chats, videos and even having ‘mandatory fun’ have just dried up. All of a sudden, the virtual meeting has become such a familiar part of the daily routine that we’re suffering burn out from an amazing tool, expedited by its global usage through a pandemic.

If you’re delivering or experiencing training, then the job is now a little harder. It’s difficult to get a temperature check on the room when everyone’s face is made of cold hard pixels.

And if the camera is off? Well, that’s surely a sign of either poor WIFI or maybe a case of ‘I don’t want to be here’.

You can’t always see faces because there’s a clunky slide deck or another shared screen in the way. Something designed to connect us, is in some cases, now having the opposite effect.

So, how do we save virtual screens from the ultimate unfriending?

We need to fall back into our original lovefest with screens and virtual meetings. We need to remember to use the medium we have to its fullest. We need to add some rich beautiful media, images, icons & music. It’s now time to treat ourselves again to extra servings of engaging videos and fun interactions and then liberally sprinkle them across our meetings and training sessions just like we do with chocolate over our fancy cappuccinos (skinny with nut milk of course)

Let’s rediscover the love and excitement for the use of a poll and bring back the sparkle in our eyes when a chat box pops open, just like when we did in the honeymoon period. It’s time to rekindle those feelings and there’s one trick up our sleeve that could truly save the day. Storytelling.

Learning to tell a great story.

We need to remember to tell engaging and insightful stories to our listeners, whoever they might be.

This is proven to be an effective way to capture and then hold onto people’s valuable attention, and guess what? A story, well told, is so much more valuable and easier to recall compared to boring old facts and miserable old bits of data. 

Remember most of the old wife’s tales you know, but aren’t quite sure why or how you remember them? You’re confused that these stories have stuck in your minds so well when you cannot remember your 18^th secure log in password of the day? That’s because you were told it as a story, and lo and behold, it stuck.

Now, not everyone can tell a story, but it’s not rocket science. A little structure goes a long way.

You need a defined beginning, middle and end. Long drawn-out meetings – we’re looking at you.

You need to draw the listener in, with something enticing, a hook if you like, so the listener is in no doubt about the all-important ‘what’s in it for me’?

A good story always has a hero and a bad guy to help prove your points and bring the situations to life. Your bad guy might take the form of budget cuts, but you use him just the same.

If you want to end on a high, then finish up with a ‘moral of the story’ situation. Proves a point. Ends the story. Resonates, and everyone loves a moral high ground. Fact!

Now. If you’re still on the fence then bear in mind that data (again) tells us that when we share anything, it’s shown to be up to 20 times more memorable when told as a story, within a meeting, a speech, a training event or webinar. Or even just a good old actual story.

So, there’s many of us right now who might be at that moment in our virtual relationship where our attention might be straying, our heads turned by another app or platform. We might still be pining for our long-lost love of the classroom or meetings room (remember them?) and seeing real faces sat on real bottoms on real chairs, but that’s not quite within our grasp just yet.

In the meantime, we’ll be reinvesting a little more time and attention into the stories we tell, and the ways and means we tell them via virtual screens and not stamping out those still warm embers of our love affair with virtual training just yet.

THIS GUEST SPEAKER ARTICLE WAS CREATED FOR WELL PREPARED TRAINING BY JEZ LIGHT.

You can learn more about him and what he does here:

http://jezlight.co.uk/

his was the question in my brain at the beginning of last week.  I’ve heard the term and why it was important and so I knew that I’d find the answer, and much more, as I was preparing myself to join the Learning Technologies Digital Experience.

If you missed this incredible opportunity to upskill your future tech awareness, it’s a 2-week conference helping those in the world of Learning & Development learn to incorporate fresh learning tools and technology for our clients.   We’ve been twice in real life and so I knew this third experience, done virtually, would give us lots of ideas.

You can play catch up here. https://www.learningtechnologies.co.uk/ltdx-full-conference-programme-2021

So, after a little self-assessment I decided that because A) I like Social Media, B) I comment on LinkedIn and C) I’m fairly sure I’ve done a Tik Tok dance challenge at least once that I was ready to understand Social Learning.

I excitedly got ready for my session, delivered expertly by THRIVE, on ‘why 2021 is the year for social learning’. I polished my screen, selected my virtual background and practiced my best social media sparkly smile and jumped straight into the session.  Turns out, no background needed but hey, I was prepared ?

STAND OUT POINTS

We talked about future proofing your L&D strategy by at least getting the ball rolling on this exciting innovation.

We marvelled at real world examples of some incredibly clever social learning wins with a couple of great case studies from THRIVE Learning.

I learned loads to share with our clients and so here are my key takeaways.

USER GENERATED CONTENT

I thought back to when I watch my nephews ‘messing around’ on their devices and just see it as harmless play. During THRIVE’s session it dawned on me, that, in fact, they’re actually creating content. User Generated Content. It doesn’t have to be super polished and professional.

Platforms like TikTok & Clubhouse have shown that content generated by ‘ordinary folk’ (instead of uber glossy paid influencers) is vastly more engaging and becomes self-generating: 

People Create – People Watch – People Create.

IT’S OK NOT TO BE IN CONTROL.

We need to accept that by letting other people make content, there is a fear of losing control. The mindset shift that’s needed here is that your people are already doing social learning over coffee, in team meetings, 121’s and on virtual calls – you’re simply giving the rest of your organisation access to it.

Trust the individual & your existing culture.

WILL IT BE ‘ON BRAND’?

There may be concerns that this new user generated content won’t support or align to strategic aims or your culture. We need to see this content as insight into what people actually need for their day-to-day work – you’re actually getting closer to your organisational needs as a result.

This doesn’t replace your L&D strategy; it simply enhances it.

IT’S NOT A COMPETITION!

We don’t quite have the same budgets as the global social giants so don’t panic – we already know we won’t be quite as ‘cool’ as TikTok, but this is about your tone & a desire to co-create a social-learning space for your teams. Pick your people wisely and use those that want to get involved & create ideas – they’ll want to cascade & generate interest themselves. 

Start small if you need to and build your content and following as your grow.

In summary, I opened my eyes to a world where I’m not always responsible for all the content, or the learning, or even sourcing it. Frightening? Maybe.

But if users are generating content that I can celebrate, share and use to support a future where everyone learns, who am I to argue?

Consider me a future social learner and trust me, next time I’ll be paying way more attention to the nephews creating content.

Sara Hickman