Experience Designer Baya Voce help events deliver the unexpected.
Baya Voce wants you to be a more courageous leader, and she wants you to start by having more exciting meetings.
“We’ve all been to gatherings,” she told me, from her home office in Austin. “We go to conferences, to summits, to meetings. Most of them are mediocre and forgettable. We rinse and repeat stale formats because it's what we see being done, not because they work to create meaningful experiences. The problem is, we haven't been taught another way."
Voce, who started her business as an experience designer in 2012, took a circuitous route to her current passion. Beginning her career as a matchmaker and a dating coach, she hosted singles mixers and speed dating events. “I knew people wanted to meet each other, but I had no idea what I was doing,” she said. She also got a degree in film, which steeped her in the atmosphere of storytelling.
After living in New York and other places, she returned to Salt Lake City where she grew up. She realized that she didn’t really know anyone there anymore. To build a new network she created her own event called Secret SLC, an invite only event with a twist: nobody would know who else was coming and what they were going to do until just a few hours before. They only knew where to meet and what time.
It was a big hit, and Voce realized that creating stories and catalyzing surprise was a way to ensure that people had a memorable experience.
Fast forward to now and Voce helps companies create memorable conferences, customer summits, and yes, your Tuesday afternoon meeting.
As a leader you can set yourself apart, she said, by creating meetings that people actually want to attend. She shared her top tips:
Create an emotional experience. That may sound hard to do during the weekly staff meeting, but Voce claims it’s easier than you think. “You could just ask everyone to share a win for that day or the week.” she said. “That creates an upbeat feeling. Or you could do a quick check in to see how everyone is feeling. It will only take a few minutes and creates an immediate connection.”
Leader starts. If you’re going to do anything vulnerable or unusual, you as the leader should go first. That allows the leader to model the behavior and also make it safe for everyone else. “Vulnerability leads to connection among the team, and that feeling lasts well beyond the meeting,” Voce said. “If you keep doing that you’ll have a team that feels connected and has psychological safety. Psychological safety is the key quality that makes good teams great.”
Have a clear purpose. “Part of what dictates what you do is why you're doing it,” Voce said. “If you don't know the purpose of the gathering, it's actually hard to do anything purposeful.” She also insists that you dig deeper for purpose. “If we're gathering for our sales meeting, you might think that the purpose is simply to review the sales pipeline. But what’s the real purpose? Why don’t we just do this over email?”
Voce said that if you probe deeper you might realize that you have the sales pipeline meeting to create ritual. You do it every Monday. You do it the same way every time. You could elevate your purpose to bonding and calibrating together as a team before they scatter out to their customers. Perhaps you do it to help the salespeople see their role in the bigger picture of the company. If that is your purpose you’d design the mundane sales meeting to deliver that and then you’d probably get a richer meeting.
Initiate a challenge. “Starting with housekeeping isn't really that interesting. Starting with expectations doesn't get people excited,” Voce said. “Challenge people. Maybe people get uncomfortable – that’s not bad. That can be stimulating.” A challenge can be as simple as asking a provocative question at the beginning of the meeting. Think about ways to change up the format of the meeting.
Change the environment. Let’s face it: most meetings are held in conference rooms which nobody would mistake for inspiring spaces. Change it up by holding the meeting outside on a nice day. Surprise your team by having a lunch meeting at a nice restaurant. Or provide some paper and color pencils and ask people to draw the state of their departments. When you change the location or make a part of the meeting unexpected, you get people’s attention and focus in a fresh way.
It all comes down to courage, according to Voce. “It’s uncomfortable to change things up in a meeting. It’s easier to do what we’ve always done. Leaders have to have the courage to try new things, to take risks, to possibly fail.”
Think about the current meetings you lead. What can you do to make them more engaging?
