How To Keep Everyone Focused in Virtual Meetings
Virtual meetings are not new, are they! They have been around for some time. Do you remember, not that long ago, the start of teleconference calls? This seemed a novel concept of connecting people together to hold meetings without travel barriers. The problem was that when you experienced some of the same issues that happen in physical meeting encounters and combined them with additional complications, such meetings became frustrating and really inefficient.
The new virtual meetings now have a major advantage over these early teleconferencing meetings. We can now see each other. But it doesn’t matter what meeting you hold of any type, the key to any successful meeting is still ensuring everyone is focused.
So, how do we keep teams focused? Recently I co-facilitated, with our Board, the first Twin Cities SEGC (Small and Emerging Growth Companies) virtual meeting. Here are some ways we learned can help to run an efficient and professional virtual meeting and keep everyone engaged and 2 others I have since learned as a bonus:
Make sure everyone can be seen
To get maximum engagement means eye contact, even in a virtual setting, so make sure everyone has their video on and they have a clear picture. If they don’t ask them to join in!
Ask Questions
Make sure we ask questions to the group. Typically 1-2 people always answer these – the same one. Make sure we ask the same question individually and seek responses from each of the participants. “Hey Tim, what do you think of this point?”.
Use Breakout Rooms
Depending on how large your meetings (this works for over 8-9 people) if you have an important subject that needs real focus, randomly divide the attendees into small teams, set a limit for discussion time, and have one person report back on the learnings. Zoom has an excellent feature that allows this and it’s something that is so easy to organize and implement that it is better than physical meetings.
Create Polls
Zoom has an online poll feature. And it works really well. To ensure everyone’s engaged to intersperse meetings with a poll that shows if everyone has answered but doesn’t pick them out individually. It’s an easy way to get so level of consensus and that is one that is less confrontational than in a physical meeting.
Take Breaks
If a meeting is lasting longer than a couple of hours, build in breaks. Just because we are meeting virtually doesn’t mean we still don’t need nature breaks, check e-mail, make a quick call, and refill coffee or water. Quick 10 minute breaks help to keep everyone’s attention and engagement.
Hide Self-view
Some of us become self-conscious about how we look when we see our own videos in virtual meetings. In non-virtual meetings we never hold a mirror up to look at ourselves, do we? So, if we start feeling self-conscious and therefore becoming unnatural it will prevent us from engaging. Find a way to hide or move your video and on Zoom, you can click on “hide self-view”.