FCCS News & Insights

Hosting Effective & Interactive Remote Meetings

04/14/2020

Virtual meetings have become a mainstay for many businesses practically overnight, enabling teams and even entire companies to make plans, keep projects moving and serve customers in a time when most of the country is working from home. Services like WebEx and Zoom are keeping the workforce connected, engaged and motivated, and it’s likely that their efficacy will keep them in use long after our shared quarantine has ended.

The virtual environment offers different challenges than a face-to-face meeting, but you can create an effective remote meeting by taking steps to ensure your meeting is both visual and interactive.

Getting Ready
When scheduling your meeting, determine if the group is small enough to accommodate everyone’s verbal participation; if not, change the default setting to mute participants.

In advance of your virtual meeting, send participants an email to set expectations and ground rules, such as to connect a few minutes early so the meeting can start on time, to call in from a quiet place if possible, to be prepared to be seen and heard (if applicable) throughout the call.

As with any meeting, preparation is key. Create visual aids such as presentation slides to support the discussion you anticipate. Also plan ahead for different ways to generate interactivity and participation using the tools discussed below.

Opening the Meeting
Setting expectations is an important step in shifting attendees from passive listeners to active participants. After your initial greeting, visually share the agenda and the meeting’s objectives or outcomes, such as the decision that needs to be reached or next steps to be defined. This helps focus participants’ attention.

Ask people to turn on their video, as this helps replicate the real-life experience and is a key aspect of the group feeling connected. Let everyone know who else is in the meeting, either by sharing a list on a presentation slide or pointing out the visual gallery of participants. For smaller groups, ask people to introduce themselves verbally.

Explain how you will interact throughout the call, whether that will be through chat or verbally for smaller groups. Ask participants to open their chat window and respond to an ice breaker question so they get used to participating and invite them to use chat throughout the meeting.

Maintaining Engagement
Much more so than during an in-person meeting, participants in remote meetings can become distracted by emails or even other calls if they’ve hidden their video. In addition to the visual support you’ve already created and are sharing throughout the meeting, remote meeting platforms offer tools to help keep participants engaged:

• Chat: Even though you’ve already invited participants to use chat on their own, build engagement throughout your presentation by periodically asking questions to solicit comments, ideas and other feedback.
• Polls: Many remote meeting platforms include a poll feature through which you can ask close-ended questions and share results in real-time. Plan ahead for several such polls to guide or support your meeting topic, and also be prepared to create them on the fly if the discussion warrants.
• Whiteboard: Many platforms include a whiteboard feature where you can capture input and recap decisions. These are typically type-based, so are somewhat more limited than the freeform drawing options of a real-life whiteboard, but enabling participants to see the progress made during the meeting will help them feel engaged and encourage further participation – they’ll see that their input is being heard. The whiteboard can be saved by the meeting host to facilitate follow-up.

Closing the Meeting
At the end of your meeting, share the whiteboard a final time and recap what was decided, next steps and any future meetings planned. After the meeting, send an email to participants with the whiteboard attached.

Other Tips

• Encourage participation: keep track offline of who is actively participating, and draw out those who are more reticent to make sure everyone gets heard. When appropriate, go around the virtual table round-robin style to ask each person’s thoughts – they can respond via chat.
• Narrow your focus: virtual meetings work most effectively with narrower objectives than you’d typically plan for an in-person meeting. You should be able to state in one sentence what you’re asking the group to solve or resolve.
• Plan for biology: if you’re planning to meet for longer than an hour, factor in and let your participants know there will be a break mid-way. During the break, display a presentation slide showing when the meeting will resume.
• Look your best: if possible, have your light source in front of rather than behind you. If this isn’t possible, adjust blinds or make other accommodations so you show clearly on the video screen. Consider raising your laptop for a more flattering view.
• Sound your best: to energize your meeting and your participants, amp up your vocal energy by speaking louder and more energetically than normal.

To connect with Jeannie Clinkenbeard, Senior Leadership Consultant with FCC Services email her at Jeannie.Clickenbeard@fccservices.com. She looks forward to hearing from you! We’re here to help.