Environment and Ambience

Have you noticed how some locations are really conducive to reflection and pondering deeply on things, while others generate energy and anticipation, or a desire to be creative? The images and colours we see around us, and the sounds we hear (particularly different types of music) seem to communicate directly at a subconscious level to encourage us to feel and anticipate in particular ways. Not in absolute terms, of course, but as an underlying bias.

The American penal system discovered that the colour of cell walls had a marked effect on the nature of interactions between inmates, and a number of businesses have set aside different meeting rooms for encouraging creativity or focused drive – people who enter them, arrive with a sense of anticipation of what is to happen, set up both by the environmental cues, and also by their own past experiences in that environment. In NLP terms the is a well known phenomenon called anchoring.

Setting the ambience in this way in a physical meeting is relatively easy, and can be achieved by means of a music player, some props, and some posters or flipchart sheets set around the room.

In the virtual world, white board spaces can be set up the same way. They can include images and messaging to set a theme, they can use colours and backgrounds to the various templates and work areas to stimulate interest, they can incorporate branding and values, or film images to stimulate ambition.

An example of such thinking can be found in the ConceptBoard familiarisation page, or in this training page on Meeting Effectiveness (access them as a guest) – the colours and shapes add a degree of curiosity and engagement that might be missing if all they held was content.

In the same way, you can use use similar  images, messages and backgrounds to create an ambience for your meetings – sometimes it is all you need to shift the initial mindset from indifference to intrigue, and that can affect how people engage with whatever other activities and content you have planned for them.

The background you can see in the two examples above have been created in PowerPoint, and then simply copied to the whiteboard and stretched into place.

Music can be added via whatever videoconferencing tools you are using, either through your own headset, or by creating a dummy participant with an mp3 jack in place of the headset (perhaps via a spare laptop). Music can be played: as people gather; during appropriate exercises; and during breaks as appropriate. But please be mindful of selecting the type of music that connects with the attitudes of mind that you are seeking, and also bear in mind any copyright requirements that might apply.

And keep it subtle – remember that we are seeking to register with the subconscious, not to baffle and bewilder the conscious.