EM 174 | How to Lead An Effective Virtual Meeting
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In this week’s Executive Minds, David Farmer and Kevin Jennings discuss how to lead an effective virtual meeting. Whether you’re a participant or leader, we’ve found ourselves conducting a ton of virtual meetings like never before. As a result, we’ve all had to learn some new skills. We discuss best practices on getting the most from virtual meetings. Tune in for this timely conversation!
Links + Resources
Three Takeaways:
What Technology Do You Need for a Great Meeting?
When thinking about technology for your meeting, you want to focus on reliability and ease-of-use. The ease of use is going to be based on your tech setup. For instance, your company might use Google Suite, and therefore, Google Meetings may be your best bet since it’s already integrated. You won’t have to worry about new logins or anything else that would come along with Zoom or BlueJeans for your video conferencing needs. Reliability, on the other hand, boils down to making sure it’s dependable for you and your team. Keep in mind: If you’re paying for it, then you’re the customer. If you’re not paying for it, then you’re the product. The company is trying to monetize you which means they don’t owe you anything if it doesn’t work! The advantage of paying for the product or service is that you get accountability if it doesn’t work.
How to Show Up for a Great Meeting?
Perfection isn’t the goal, but the effort still matters! Start by letting people know your situation (if need be). Perhaps, your child might wake up from a nap during this call or there’s some ongoing construction outside of your window. All of these disclaimers are helpful and add to your professionalism because you’re letting everyone know you care about how you’re presenting yourself in the meeting. Let people know that there’s going to be a designated time for questions and they can ask them then or allow them to post their questions in the chat feature. People are more agenda-driven in the virtual space and appreciate the effort to make the most of everyone’s time together. You may want to assign a moderator to review the chat if you’re presenting so that you can focus on providing the information.
How to Gather and Display Content for a Great Meeting?As facilitators, we often write notes on a whiteboard in real-time during meetings that help focus the conversation and move the team towards the end objective. There are ways to reproduce this concept in the virtual space. You can create templates for documents beforehand that you can fill in during the presentation. Or you can have a shared document with the team that allows them to add, review, or update with their contributions from the meeting. Perhaps, it’s allowing space during the meeting for everyone to brainstorm independently on a shared document. By doing so, everyone is given adequate time to flush out their ideas while not competing to be heard. This virtual whitespace can help display a lot of useful content from the meeting’s agenda.