Your meetings need koalangoos and lioncoons

Lioncoon: Your trashcan's worst nightmare. (Images courtesy of Lisel Coles)Lisel Coles has witnessed many changes during her 16 years as a clinic manager at Haiku Veterinary Clinic in Kaneohe, Hawaii, but one constant has remained: Meetings. Lots of them. Every day. Every week. Every month. Oh, the monotony!

While meetings must remain, they needn't remain boring. Just ask Coles, who breaks up every meeting over 30 minutes with an activity.

Koalangoo: Too cute? Just the right amount of cute?For example, at a recent meeting she tasked attendees with drawing and naming mythical creatures that were a mix of two animals (which is where the koalangoo and lioncoon were born). At another, she passed out index cards and asked participants to write down one thing the person on their left excels at in their professional or personal lives.  

“Having fun together builds unity and gets my staff excited about meetings,” Coles said. “It's great to see my staff members giggle and smile in the middle of a stressful day and even blush from the nice things said about them.”

Coles got the idea to add lighthearted activities to long meetings from someone else's example and ran with it. Now, it's your turn.

We've put together a checklist of 10 fun exercises that take five minutes or less that you can try with your own staff. We've included Coles' examples, added some from dvm360 editors and left space for you to write in your own ideas.

Download it. Print it. Try it. Send us pictures of your unicows and allipotamuses.