It’s been quite some time now living in these unprecedented times. We have been hearing news from all around. The increase in the count of coronavirus patient is going through the roof. Almost all countries are either in the middle of their lockdown or have just started lifting it for the sake of reviving their economy. Like the United States, UK, China, Italy, France, and other nations of the world, the World’s biggest superpowers are taking the stride of this pandemic. We see economies and big corporations all adjusting to the new reality. As the world is relentlessly fighting against this pandemic, each of us struggles with our own. The struggle to strike the right work-life balance, keep your entire team in the loop, learn and adjust to new normal. Among many other things, online presentations and virtual meetings have become an absolute new norm.
Online meetings have taken a fixed space in our daily work schedule. Are the virtual meetings that you attend almost daily really as effective as they should be?
To make a virtual meeting highly effective is a head-scratching task. You need to do a lot of things before and during the meeting to ensure everything goes smoothly.
I hope you acknowledge that we need a different approach to make a virtual meeting work by now. In the following article, we will see all sorts of things we can do. It starts right from choosing the right virtual meeting tool, setting agendas, and following up with everyone after the meeting is done.
Selecting the right tool
If anything has seen a rise in this pandemic, it is the virtual meetings hosting applications. Apps like Zoom, MS Team, Cisco WebEx have come into existence like mushrooms in the rainy season. Selecting the right tool is the foundation of an effective meeting and saves you from all kinds of trouble. The choice of your tools is also dependent on the purpose or type of meeting. It could be just a standup call with your team member, a brainstorming session, or a long-running bi-monthly team- client meeting.
There exist just so many tools now like, GoToMeeting, Zoom, Skype, etc. Explore all the options that you have and pick one depending on your needs. Ensure basic features like audio and video functionality to the very least. Make sure you need features like screen recording, HD video quality support, screen sharing feature, web polling, etc.
However, it is imperative to acknowledge that video conferencing has some demerits as well. Some participants get very conscious when they see the light blinking next to their web camera. Hence, it becomes difficult to keep them engaged. Make sure you set the rules of the meeting to fit everyone attending.
Encourage attendees to keep video on
Here is an interesting fact about us, human beings. We are naturally attracted more to faces. We are born with this attraction, and in short, we adore faces be it ours or others. So, when you are on a video call while talking to your client globally or hosting a team meeting, make sure your face is visible. Doing this alone will increase your likability significantly. Almost all the online meeting hosting platforms give you the option to keep your video on while you are sharing your screen.
You can take your game a notch up if you encourage attendees the meeting to set the camera a little far. It will help you and the people attending to display and capture body language. It will allow you to demonstrate more non-verbal cues like your hand gesture. If I start to dwell on what wonders your hand gestures/ body language can do, we will need another blog altogether. Following are some basic tips for starters:
- Do not just say hello. Wave your hands while you say it
- Try and keep your hands visible while you are on the presentation
- Include adequate gestures
Come Prepared
When you are hosting a virtual meeting, you should try and make the process as seamless as possible. It requires certain preparation, which needs to be done beforehand. You can sit and think of potential roadblocks/ errors that can potentially creep in.
Send login credentials well before time:
If you are hosting a meeting, it is expected of you to send an email with all the login credentials well before time. Also, if required, send a reminder a day before the meeting is scheduled. Include the URL, set agendas of the meeting, and attendees list in the e-mail.
Consider different time zones:
Make sure you are not getting people to attend the meeting outside their workdays. This often happens when you have people attending meetings from different time zones. If it is unavoidable to set the meeting at a particular time, make sure you check with the people who will have to attend outside their work hours.
Fix technical errors:
Make a point that you double-check all of your pieces of equipment well before time. All things (including your microphone, webcam, and wifi/LAN connection) are working fine. If technical problems arise, it can potentially give the impression that you are an unreliable person. If it is an important meeting, have someone (on standby) look into the technical matters if there are any problems on that front. Doing so will help you stay focused solely on the matter at hand and guide rich discussions in the meeting.
Get rid of distractions:
Put your phone in silent mode, turn off the desktop speakers, switch off electric appliances, which can cause distractions. Ensure that your room is kids/ dog free.
Dress properly:
This one is often neglected in online meetings, but know it is important that you dress wisely. If you are hosting or even attending, you must dress in business-appropriate clothes (including your pants). Another highlight here is keeping in mind that your clothes’ color shouldn’t match the background.
Have ground rules in place
These are dependent on many factors like the number of people attending, the subject of the meeting, etc. However, there are some common rules that you can iterate before starting the virtual meeting. These rules are important as they bind people to a uniform code of conduct and guide behavior. You can ask participants to login 5 to 10 mins early to set their video and audio devices and have adequate time in hand.
Another very common rule is to ask participants to keep themselves mute while they are not speaking or preparing to speak. Doing this cuts down the background noises that can potentially hamper the flow of the meeting. Ensure the call is audio-only. All the participants make it a point to state their name before they speak. It helps people to know and follow the person speaking. Lastly, encourage everyone attending to get rid of all the distractions around, like background noises. This way, they will be free to participate actively in the meeting.
Keep virtual reality in mind while communicating
When we have a physical meeting in the real world, there are a lot of things that we pick,, from facial expressions to the tone of voice. All these things are not very clear in the virtual meeting. You need to take all of this into consideration while communicating. Focus more on strengthening your active listening skills. Demonstrate that you have paid attention to the other person by simply summarizing what the other person has said and asking smart and relevant questions. Ensure you communicate how you feel by being vocal about it, especially when you have your video off. If you are not 100% sure about something, ask the other person for clarification.
Be a guide
It is also imperative to guide a healthy and seamless discussion throughout. For example, imagine saying, “Hi, all. Let’s first begin with some introduction one by one. Who wants to start?” In most cases, you will hear nothing but silence because no one is sure who will go first. If people start to speak, they go all at once, and it becomes chaotic. It is much more preferable that you anticipate all such things in advance as a host of the people. When guiding discussions, you can start by saying, “Hello, everyone, let’s start with an introduction. Rahul, why don’t you take the opportunity of going first, followed by Anjali and then Riya?”
Facilitate discussions
It is crucial to keep everyone engaged when all of the employees work from home and, more importantly, the little reserved members. A great facilitator doesn’t just promote engagement but also creates a safe space for people to pitch their thoughts. If you find that there is a set of participants who are dominating, change the structure so that everyone gets an equal opportunity. Something like a round-robin style where all the participants are made to speak for five minutes. They are encouraged to put forward their thoughts and experiences on the given subject.
Yet if you find many people or someone from the team being overshadowed by others, make sure you carve some time to give them space. Make sure everyone is listening. There are chances that some may still be a little reluctant or hesitant, have a chatbox where they can type what they have to say. Take out some time to schedule a one on one call with them. Ask them for their feedback on how you can make the remote meetings more inclusive and better as a whole.
After meeting follow-ups
For a meeting to be called effective, make sure everyone in the meeting has clarity of the way forward for them. For example, they should know their key deliverables or what is expected of them, the deadlines, who will be the reporting manager, and when the next meeting will be held.
Also, know that if you are the host, then an important part of your meeting is to have a follow-up with all the attendees. This follow-up can be one on one call or a general email sent with an attached link to a feedback survey. The feedback survey and the participants’ thoughts will give first-hand insights into how you can make the future meeting much more effective and inclusive.
Tips for hybrid meetings
On a lot of occasions, there are hybrid meetings that happen, mostly with offshore clients. You have your team physically present, and other attendees are on the call. You have to pay extra attention to accommodate all the members, especially the one attending virtually. For example, it can be a little difficult for the members not physically present to hear clearly in this particular case. You will have to encourage all the members to present physically to speak directly into the microphone. Also, make sure just one person is speaking at a time because trying to catch multiple voices can be really challenging.
Conclusion
In this time and age, organizations are increasingly depending on virtual meetings. Now we are well aware that it comes with its different pros and cons compared to conventional face to face meetings. In this article, we learned how we could minimize the cons. The fact is that virtual meetings require different skills altogether. It is, therefore, essential to familiarize yourself with the tools beforehand. Have a contingency plan to handle common glitches that can potentially occur. You would also want to appoint someone for additional help to handle technical issues occurring at the meeting time. This will enable you to focus solely on the facilitating part.
Do not forget to keep in mind that you are communicating on a virtual platform. Encourage people to talk and engage, especially the ones you think are struggling to participate. To make your meeting even better, take a follow-up feedback survey. Ask the participants about the challenges they faced and how you can make it better for future meetings.
