Meeting stealth humour

When we have to attend meetings or conference sessions that we really don’t want to attend, but HAVE to, you can – carefully and with prudence – have some fun to alleviate the boredom. Just remember that this is subversive activity, and imprudent use may well alienate other work colleagues, managers or people of influence.

In saying that, some of the best fun I have had are with the following, without anyone else knowing that there was a game going on:

• Pen clicks: synchronise pen clicking with your neighbours
• Bullshit bingo: decide with a few colleagues four business phrases or terms that each need to get. Each focus on exactly what is being said. The first to get their four has to then slide “Bingo” into the meeting without anyone outside the player group noticing.
• Rare words: before the meeting, allocate a rare word to each person playing. The winner is the one who delivers their word in the meeting first, using a realistic sentence. You might want to ramp this up with everyone being allocated four words, and being the first to finish.
• The interrupter: With a colleague, tee up that whenever you start talking, they interrupt you. Ensure you try to contribute – and interrupt – often in the meeting. Once people are starting to get uncomfortable, tell them that you have set this up to illustrate [one of the issues you are discussing in the meeting – eg, how reluctant we are to challenge bad behaviour in others]. NB: this can only be used once in a department!
• The challenge check off: with colleagues, use the template here (replace those things that don’t happen in your meetings). Whoever gets the most points wins.

Be very, very careful in playing these, though. These activities are all best done as secretly as possible.


Sam

• Reference: Cohen, G. (2011). Challenge Check Off. Retrieved from http://gamesforboringmeetings.com/printouts/Challenge_Check_Off.pdf