Good meeting facilitators know that you cannot rely on the resources you might expect to find in a meeting room, and so they typically carry with them a case affectionately known as ‘the battlebox’.
For physical meetings, the average battlebox contains new and fully-working quantities of: sticky-notes; flipchart pens; dry-wipe pens; sticky dots; blutack; masking tape; scissors; a timer; batteries; and some space for other props that the facilitator might use regularly. My battlebox is shown within the orb symbol above right, and also includes: a pen-knife; voting cards; a whistle; a koosh-ball; stapler; elastic bands; some money; a clothesline; and some mints.
For remote meetings, a virtual battlebox can be equally useful, except that instead of a steel case it normally takes the form of a folder or a PowerPoint file. And it is not so much to compensate for resources that may be missing (since in the virtual world, it’s your own meeting room, and the ink never runs out) but for unexpected issues that you didn’t plan for.
The virtual battlebox normally contains graphic resources that you can quickly copy and paste into your meeting when circumstances take a turn that you didn’t foresee. Tools to help you: clarify strength of feeling; capture opinions; keep track of time; reach consensus; break the tension; open up creativity; or cope with technical failures in one or other of your main meeting tools (fortunately PowerPoint works equally well in videoconferencing and whiteboard tools – however, not all the functionality works in both).
Whatever you choose to put in your virtual battlebox, revisit it regularly so that you know what is where, and how it works, and can deploy it quickly if required. It can be very stressful when things go wrong, particularly in meetings which contain particularly influential participants, and that stress can undermine your ability to think clearly at the level you need.
If you struggle to find what you are looking for, or it goes wrong, this only exacerbates the stress and further undermines your higher-level thinking. Conversely, if you can find and apply what you need almost automatically, it creates space and confidence for you to reassert control and credibility.
Some of the things to consider for your virtual battlebox are:
- A countdown timer to manage syndicate progress in the whiteboard
- A poll everywhere page to engage participation in there are difficulties with the whiteboard
- A whiteboard mood indicator to provide feedback to a presenter using videoconferencing
- A whiteboard timer to help keep presentations via videoconferencing to time
- Key templates to participatively and constructively resolve any issues arising
- A copy of the objectives and agenda in case people need reminding of them
- A copy of meeting groundrules in case behaviours slip during the meeting
- Any key documentation that you might need
- Emergency and participant contact details in case you need to contact people directly
- Icebreaker questions to shift the mood or break things up a bit
- A blob tree to assess the sense of feeling at any point
Track your progress to ensure the efficacy of this strategy.