Can everyone go on mute

Running a successful meeting is key to communicating with your team.  Meetings are a good way for everyone on your team to hear status, updates, and to connect with each other.  When you get team members in a room together, you can resolve an issue or a least start talking through the issues.  The non-verbal cues (smiling, crossing arms, smirks) help you to interpret how your peers are responding to the information. 

Meetings can also be time consuming and a big waste of time if the meeting moderator is not prepared.  If you have people calling into the meeting to participate, you are now dealing with another major distraction during your call.  Multi-tasking!  Without the face-to-face contact, meeting participants can easily start focusing on other things.  As the meeting moderator you need to know how to run an effective virtual meeting. 

I participate and moderate a lot of virtual meetings.  Here are a few of the things I do during my meetings.

1.  Use a web conference tool.  Web conference tools help to keep everyone connected.  Many web conference tools have polling options, chat rooms, and sharing features that help teams communicate.

2.  Be prepared and be aware of time.    Determine your meeting agenda and send the agenda out to your team before the meeting.  Determine how much time should be devoted to each agenda item.  Allow time to summarize the meeting and  action items.  End the meeting on time.

3. Record the call or take minutes.  Record the call for coworkers who may not be able to attend the meeting.  Send out meeting minutes after the meeting.

4. Create a place to store meeting collateral.  Put meeting agendas, minutes, and presentations in a shared space for future reference.  Team members should be able to refer to meeting information at a later date. 

5. Allow time for small talk.  Give the team time to talk to each other.  If members are a little shy, have questions to break the ice.  Allow your team to post pictures or videos of things they want to share about themselves or their family.

6. Get everyone involved.  Let’s face it. It’s easy to zone out in a virtual meeting. Make sure you give everyone time to talk and participate in the call.  If everyone is quiet and unwilling to talk, call people by name to answer questions and to get their feedback.

7. Encourage the use of the mute button.  Ask team members to go on mute to cut down on distracting noises (barking dogs, construction banging, toilet flushing).  This could be a separate post! LOL

8. Cancel the meeting if needed.  Be aware of deadlines and cancel the meeting if team members need to focus on their project.  If you don’t have agenda items, cancel the meeting. Your team would appreciate having the time back in their day.

 

Do you have tips to share?