SIMPLE TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE VIRTUAL MEETINGS

‘Hello, are you there? Can you hear me? Can you see my screen? Apologies, my network tripped off while you were speaking.’

These are only a few of the lines I’ve heard repeatedly over the past few months of working from home and being part of virtual meetings. Meetings are necessary for productivity but can easily become a time-wasting activity if not properly done. With most company employees now working from home, staff and team members in different locations and local conditions, it’s even more important for managers to get a good grip of virtual collaboration. If not done right, you risk disengagement of team members, deprioritizing of key actions and an overall drop in business results.

Today, I would share five tips that would help you deliver effective meetings.

1.     Prepare: Set a clear purpose for your meeting and communicate this ahead to the participants. With an outcome in mind, it’s easier to steer the conversations within the limits of set objectives. Also prepare a simple outline of the information you would be presenting to guide your flow. In addition, do not encourage the reading of reports during meetings. Instead share a pre-read ahead so that team members can familiarize themselves with the information and formulate ideas. This would allow more time for discussion on core points and better inputs from participants.

2.     Engage: invite only the necessary people. Don’t clog other peoples’ calendars with meetings that they aren’t relevant to them. Then at the start of the meeting, introduce members or let them introduce themselves. With team members in different environments, they risk having distractions from other things like emails, instant messenger apps, offline side conversations and more so it’s important to deliberately pull people into the present. In the course of the meeting, ask for individual input by name and encourage videos. Facial expressions matter, videos humanize meetings and helps you to quickly spot when there’s a lull in the room.

3.     Set ground rules: there are no physical cues in virtual meetings, so there’s a tendency for some members to keep to meeting etiquette. So, set ground rules at the start of the meeting, e.g. mute when not talking or when in a noisy place, do not interrupt when someone else is talking, etc.

4.     Focus: avoid distractions on your end and ensure that you follow the conversations. As the facilitator, ensure that you provide cues and direction when participants start discussing unrelated topics. This would help you avoid long meetings and keep within time limits.

5.     Always close with clear actions, owners and timelines: as with physical meetings, the test of effectiveness is decisions. Before a meeting ends, summarize key points, actions, owners and execution timelines.

Pro-Tip: do not allow passive aggressive behavior or blame passing if a team member cannot participate fully in meeting due to bad network connection.

This list isn’t exhaustive but can greatly improve the quality of your meetings. I would love to hear which you find most helpful, or any other tip not captured here. Simply drop a comment below, and let’s learn from one another.

Cheers!