Paul "Torrance pinpointed 18 cognitive skills that are part of the creative thinking process. They include humor, imagination, originality, and synthesizing. For the sake of simplicity, let’s take humor as an example.In what ways might I incorporate humor to heighten my team’s anticipation about our upcoming strategic planning meeting? "
[4 Ways to Incorporate Humor in a meeting/class]
1. One way to incorporate humor is by sending a funny video in your meeting email confirmation:
“Hi All, I look forward to seeing you tomorrow at 10 am at our strategic planning session. In preparation for the meeting, please watch this quick, three-minute YouTube video. Cheers!”
Your team members will quickly realize that the video is Tripp and Tyler’s parody of “Every Meeting Ever,” hilariously accurate with all the usual suspect personalities. You’ll have them surprised and laughing, and at the meeting tomorrow you can open with a confession and that you are turning over a new leaf on boring, unproductive meetings.
Videos are effective to stoke humor but there are so many other possibilities.
2. Another way to use humor is to draw on your own strengths. For example, I can imagine my punster father writing this email to his banking colleagues:
“A wealth manager, an operations technician, and the CEO walked into a bar. Come to tomorrow’s meeting at 10 am and I will reveal the punchline!”
This is setting the tone. It’s what teacher Emily Hyland likes to call “making a pitch.”
3. Another possibility to engage humor and originality is to pose a question:
“As you prepare for tomorrow’s strategy meeting at 10 am, think about the following question: In what ways might we incorporate productive humor into this and future meetings? The funnier your response, the better. See you there!”
Take just 3 minutes at the start of the meeting to share and have a laugh.
4. When you connect humor to the very topic of your meeting, you will get right to the next stage of Torrance's model and dive deeper into the topic.
If you are discussing the development of an online financial portal, your email might look like this:
“In preparation for tomorrow’s development meeting at 10 am, please consider the following question: What tweaks might we make to the product so that customers experience a smile or a laugh during their user experience? The wackier the ideas the better, as crazy ideas can help us break out of the current predictability of our thinking.”
Via
Jim Lerman