Planning virtual meetings

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Virtual meetings require higher levels of concentration than physical meetings, so bear this in mind when planning the duration of your meeting. Virtual meetings of less than two hours in duration tend to be the most effective. If your virtual meeting needs to be longer than two hours, be sure to include regular comfort breaks.

Meeting duration

It is harder to control large audiences virtually than face-to-face, therefore minimize audience size by inviting only those attendees that are essential to achieving the meeting objectives.

Audience size

In planning your agenda set out how you want to run the virtual meeting, such as priority topics, speakers, time allocations and actionable items.

Agenda

Use the virtual meeting time wisely. Send out background information or data prior to the meeting, so that you and the attendees can use the actual meeting time to focus on the core objectives.

Pre-Reading

Your virtual meeting might require you to use various virtual tools, such as screen sharing, chat, break-out rooms, whiteboards and polls. If this is the case, be sure to plan, practice and prepare for their usage prior to the meeting itself.

Technology requirements

As meeting host, make sure you are familiar with the tools and features of the virtual meeting room platform you intend to use. Ahead of your virtual meeting encourage attendees to run any platform test links or download any necessary platform plug-ins. During the meeting, ensure your attendees are also comfortable knowing how the tools work.

Virtual platform familiarity

Provide attendees with meeting guidelines in advance: ie being punctual, avoiding multitasking, contributing and adhering to the agenda.

Meeting guidelines

As meeting host having a second computer allows you to keep the virtual meeting alive should the first computer fail. Prior to the meeting, you should also plan who would take over hosting the meeting should you run into any technical difficulties.

Backup computer

Plan who will capture and distribute meeting outputs and keep track of time.

Meeting responsibilities

Create the same conditions – for hybrid meetings when some of the attendees are in a physical room and others are joining virtually, it’s important that all attendees have a similar experience – those in the physical room should also sign in to the virtual meeting room so they can contribute in the same way as the virtual attendees.

Running a hybrid meetingMeetings that include both face-to-face and virtual attendees

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Attendees in the physical location should use a speakerphone that allows all voices to be heard by the virtually attendees to ensure that the entire group can feel part of the same conversation.

Get the audio right

When soliciting attendees’ opinions, thoughts and inputs, start with the virtual attendees first to prevent domination by the physical group.

Virtual attendees first

Virtual attendees should turn on their webcams to help develop a greater sense of presence and convey any body language.

Use webcams to promote presence

Any notable body language made by the physical attendees should be communicated orally to the virtual attendees, for example “everyone is nodding”, “people are rolling their eyes”, “people look tired and ready for a break”.

Convey body language orally

All attendees should say their name prior to contributing to the discussion, ie “David here, I’d like to…”. This helps attendees to more easily recognize who the speaker actually is.

Announce yourself

At the beginning of the meeting, share a slide showing everyone that is attending the meeting – include their photo, name and job role. This will enable all attendees to get a greater sense of who is actually in the meeting.

Attendee photo board

Attendees that are in a physical room are likely to engage in side conversations with each other. This is not only distracting for the virtual attendees but it also develops a feeling of exclusion. Provide clear meeting guidelines to prevent this happening.

Control side conversations

Creating engagement in virtual meetings

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Although muting attendees audio at the start of the virtual meeting helps to manage extraneous noise, if you leave them on mute, you suppress their ability to speak spontaneously. So, get into the practice of encouraging attendees to control their own audio.

Don’t ‘auto-mute’

By assigning a note taker and time keeper, the other attendees can focus on contributing to the meeting.

Assign responsibilities

As you start a virtual meeting, check with the attendees as to whether there are likely to be any distractions or interruptions that will take them away from the core of the meeting.

Highlight possible distractions

Within your virtual meeting platform you may have various tools such as chat, white boards, annotation tools, feedback icons and polling tools - ensure you leverage the toolset to keep your audience engaged.

Leverage the toolset

To maintain audience engagement, vary who you direct your questions to and don’t call on the same people each time. You should also vary how you want them to respond, ie using chat, polls, whiteboards or verbally.

Vary questioning approach

Stick to the agenda and keep conversations both focused and concise. Meetings that go off track often result in attendees disengaging or switching their attention to other tasks not the related to the meeting.

Stay on track

Meetings with smaller audiences are more likely to invoke deeper conversation and inputs from those attending which in turn results in greater group engagement.

Less is more

Some attendees may be reticent or reluctant to speak out. Don’t just let them sit in silence – engage them by proactively drawing them into the conversation.

Work the audience

Using a whiteboard or chat makes the capturing of responses from the entire group much quicker than is possible by asking attendees to verbalize their response in turn.

Use tools to create momentum

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