With the change in global workplace culture, it is now more common to have scattered teams working from different parts of the world. This has immensely benefited many organizations as they get to work with experts in the industry regardless of their location.
Remote work became the new norm due to the sudden onset of the pandemic and managers had to resort to virtual meetings and online communication tools to manage work effectively. Virtual meetings are easy to schedule, inexpensive and give you full control over who you want to include.
But this does not mean that hosting a productive virtual meeting is free of challenges. When compared to an in-person meeting, the online communication feels disintegrated and managers often find it difficult to get everyone to contribute. In this article, we’ve listed top strategies to conduct an effective and productive virtual meeting.
Find the right tool:
Much of the credit for seamless communication goes to the tool that you use for a virtual meeting. The correct online meeting software will streamline the process and make it easy to share information amongst team members. Make sure it has an easy-to-use interface that employees can quickly navigate.
While every meeting will have a different purpose, you need to ensure your online meeting software supports high-quality audio and video. It is necessary for virtual meetings to be conducted on a software that can easily accommodate other collaborative tools.
Prepare in advance:
Entering into a virtual meeting unprepared is as bad as walking into a room not knowing what to speak. When you schedule a meeting, you need to have an agenda and ensure that it encompasses everything that you need to discuss in the meeting.
Not only do you need an agenda for yourself, but also to let everyone who is a part of the meeting know what the topics for discussion are. This will help them stay focused on the topic and ensure a productive outcome.
Make sure to check your technology and an internet connection to avoid any technical issues during the meeting. Additionally, it’s essential to create visually appealing presentation materials to keep your audience engaged. Before the meeting, take time to practice your delivery and pay attention to your posture, tone, and body language to make sure you are projecting confidence. To take your virtual presentation skills to the next level, consider enrolling in executive presentation coaching programs and workshops that offer personalized feedback and guidance on your speaking and visual aids, helping you to build confidence and develop a polished delivery style. Properly preparing your speech and presentation, you will be able to effectively communicate your message and leave a lasting impression on your virtual audience.
Involve everyone:
To have a truly successful virtual meeting, it is important to include only those who are important for that very discussion. Moreover, you need to ensure every meeting participant is involved and contributing to the discussion.
Managers need to be proactive and put in the effort to make everyone comfortable so they feel involved in the conversation. A good strategy is to take pauses to get everyone’s suggestions and approvals after every important topic on the agenda.
Keep in mind different time zones:
When managers are handling distributed teams and need multiple team members to collaborate over a discussion, it is crucial to keep in mind the time difference. To involve everyone from various time zones in a virtual meeting, look for a time slot that can be adopted by everyone.
Expecting team members from a certain time zone to always make adjustments is unjust and must be avoided. If you need to conduct meetings often with teams scattered globally, you can rotate meeting times so as to be fair to everyone.
Eliminate multitasking:
Often employees are running on tight deadlines and have very limited time on their hands. When managers schedule a meeting in such a situation, it is not surprising that employees would attempt to multitask in order to achieve multiple things within the given time frame.
Managers must take efforts to ban and eliminate multitasking completely because it can actually turn out to be counterproductive if employees do not pay full attention during the meeting. They may end up missing out on valuable information that can lead to mistakes in the future.
Conclusion:
While basic etiquettes are still applicable, hosting effective virtual meetings requires a very streamlined approach to ensure everyone’s time gets utilized well and you get the most out of it. The above strategies should be incorporated to ensure virtual meetings are meaningful and successful.