How to provide new experiences at meetings
How can we provide new experiences at meetings? Not new F&B, decor, or glitz. Something deeper.
Here’s a story…
A memorial service
Last month, I staffed an online memorial service for E, a friend who died tragically, at age 42, of breast cancer. With over a hundred attendees, most listened as friends and family spoke. When the main service ended, I hosted one of several breakout rooms for those who wanted to stay and talk.
People were allocated to the breakout rooms randomly. A woman in my room looked quite upset, and I asked her how she knew E. She shared that they met each other in high school, and were friends for many years. They eventually drifted apart, and only reconnected when she heard about E’s cancer.
The woman looked really upset. So I asked her if she wanted to tell us more. She burst into tears. “We found out we had breast cancer at the same time, and both went into treatment.” She sobbed harder. And then she cried out, “But I survived. I’m OK.”
We talked about her guilt at surviving. We gave her the gift of listening. Afterward, she looked better, and perhaps she felt a little better too.
New experiences
We gave the woman an opening to share her feelings of guilt. She gained a new experience, one that I think was significant to her.
It was also a significant new experience for me. At the start of the breakout, I had no idea what would happen. I felt happy to be able to give this woman a place to voice her feelings. It’s the kind of work I love to do, my ikigai.
Providing new experiences at meetings can be as simple as this.
Creating environments and opportunities for new experiences to happen.
Fear of new experiences
To an infant, all experiences are new. Rapidly though, as we grow older, experiences repeat and they become comfortable and familiar. It’s tempting to desire to try and relive old, pleasant experiences, rather than seek out new ones. That’s understandable. New experiences can be scary. Not only for the person experiencing them but also for society. As D.H. Lawrence said a hundred years ago:
“The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences…The world doesn’t fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can’t pigeon-hole a real new experience.”
—D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature
This universal fear is the reason the meeting industry continues to struggle with incorporating new experiences into events. Often, we sidestep the issue and tell ourselves that some novel venue, decor, food and beverage, or lighting will provide attendees with “a new experience”.
We choose to forget that magic happens outside one’s comfort zone.
And another opportunity for providing meaningful new experiences at an event is missed.
The alternative? Be brave, and explore and implement the practical suggestions below!
How to provide valuable new experiences at meetings
There’s a simple answer to the question: “How can we provide valuable new experiences at meetings?”
It requires a shift of perspective. At traditional meetings, it’s assumed that the meeting conveners are responsible for specific new experiences. This implies that the attendees are passive receivers of the program. They have no role in its creation. At traditional meeting after meeting, the onus is solely on the conveners to provide valuable new experiences. The temptation is to come up with cosmetic changes that, while possibly entertaining to some degree, do not fundamentally change what happens at the event.
Here’s what to do instead.
Instead of dreaming up changes to the physical environment of the meeting — the F&B, decor, etc. — provide a process environment that supports and encourages appropriate new interpersonal experiences around the content they want and need.
Doing this makes the participants co-creators of experiences that matter to them.
And doing this isn’t hard! I, and many others, have been designing and facilitating such meeting environments for decades. Here are the books I recommend that explain what you need to know and how to implement them. And here’s how to make it easier for attendees to risk having new experiences at your event.
If you want to know how well this works, take a look at the randomly chosen participants’ comments about my events over the last thirty years that appear in the sidebar of this blog.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
If I can help you in any way create an environment for new experiences at your meetings, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Original image attribution: Flickr user tauw under CC BY-NC 2.0 license
