Meetings are instrumental for discussing ideas, have debates, or explore connections between ideas that explore an issue from different perspectives. It is an essential part of corporate culture that helps everyone collectively achieve the team goal. But the pandemic has taught us to carry out vital tasks in a different way. Essentials parts of the workflow have all moved on with online platforms. As a result, meetings are now being conducted online.
Essential Tips for Remote Meetings
Usually, meetings are held to ratify decisions, exchange opinions and make recommendations for the company. Remote meetings are also held for the same purpose. An engaging discussion among team members can pretty much solve and mitigate all the issues that occur at work. Meetings are a platform to discuss and find the best solution to overcome the problems.
1. Set the meeting agenda
The Agendas are the very reason why meetings are called for. The agenda of meeting gives the host control over the proceedings of the discussions. It’s easy to get derailed on a virtual meeting. So having a specific agenda will help guide the host as well as the participants in the right direction.
2. Inform the team members of the date, time and agenda
Once you are done selecting your agenda for the meeting, it’s your task to invite team members and notify them about the date, time and agenda of the meeting. As a result, participants will get enough time to make up their mind and deliver their valuable contribution to the discussion.
3. Set a backup plan
As virtual meetings are conducted on your computers, it’s advantageous to know your hardware. There are a lot of parameters that can go wrong while conducting a meeting such as electricity, internet, software and hardware issues. So just in case, you miss out on any one of them its better to keep a backup plan to conduct the meeting by other means.
4. Personally introduce every participant
It’s a good practice to introduce everyone before the start of a meeting. This helps participants acknowledge each other’s opinion. Typically people give more attention to another’s opinion when one knows who he’s talking to. This part can also act as an ice breaker for the host to start the proceedings of the meetings.
5. Set the motion of the meeting
Once done with the casual conversation, it’s better to straight jump into the point to avoid all types of a lapse in time. A meeting may have several purposes like finishing a solution to an issue, brainstorming, idea sharing or just a recurring scheduled weekly meeting. It’s better to set the goals along with the intended outcomes to create a primary base of discussion.
6. Engage with team members
To ensure full productivity of meetings, quality engagement of the members is a must. Regular meetings are boring to sit out. Lively interactions between participants will make sure the agenda set before the meeting is reached. On the other hand, this will also create a functioning relationship among members and improve the collaboration among members of the team.
7. Make sure everyone contributes
Directly ask participants to contribute. Involve the participants with different roles and make everyone feel they can contribute. Ensuring at least one talking point with everyone. This will create inclusiveness which will motivate and raise performance bars on its own. Having any purpose other than listening to everyone in the meetings will encourage them to go on with the meeting with total presence of mind.
8. Prioritize the outcome
Online meetings are thought to be a bit less productive than face to face meetings. So hosts always need to bear in mind the ways to improve collaboration and outcomes. So a clear cut outcome-oriented meeting with performance objectives and expectations for individuals and teams are the best for an organisation working remotely. Engaging online with a group of people may become hard at times. So drawing up short, concise and realistic outcomes will help their cause.
9. Note down meeting minutes
Capturing the discussed agendas of a meeting and minute taking agreed upon is an essential part of any kind of meetings. The minute taking course teaches you everything on the topic thoroughly from scratch. The records act as the basis for future discussion, decision making and actions. You can assign a member in charge of taking meeting minutes. The same data collected by taking minutes can act central to keep the team working in the right direction.
10. Send followup of the meeting
Meeting are held to help brainstorming, decision making and adjust the point of actions. The decisions agreed upon in the meeting are to be noted and send out to the team members as followups. The deliverables are to be fixed for each member. It will also ensure accountability and well sorted out plans for team members.
Best Practices to Enhance Engagements on Remote meetings
Some of the best ways to enhance the engagements from remote meetings are:
Turn on the camera
Most people might seem camera-shy at first and reject showing their face on remote meetings. But seeing your colleagues on camera is an enjoyable experience. It helps you connect easily in an efficient way.
Mute while not using the mic
A best practice for conducting online meetings is to turn off everyone else’s mic apart from the one talking. Otherwise, it can create chaos in the discussion. Maintaining this will save the waste of time and help outcomes.
Don’t interrupt
Disrupting someone in the middle of their speech can be very annoying for anyone. Instead, it can harm thoughts and speech. This can even influence outcomes. So if anyone needs to say somethings in between talks, it’s required to take permission and speak at a convenient time.
Create opportunities for team bonding
Start off with an ice breaker is a great idea to start off meetings. As host, you may start off with a question, quiz or a puzzle. There are several ice breaker questions you can look for online.
Attempt to include diverse people to conduct a robust and open dialogue
An open discussion should always consist of diverse people to organize a robust conversation and sharing of ideas. A meeting consisting of the same nature people is unlikely to come up with anything new for the company.
Top Remote Meetings Software’s
Top five remote meeting software used for small meetings are:
1. Google meet
2. Zoom meeting
3. Skype for Business
4. GoToMeeting
5. Join.me
Concluding remarks
Meetings are an essential part of working in collaboration with teams. So no matter what the meetings are instrumental for organizations to proceed in the right direction. The tips suggested above can play a role to create a functioning relationship among team members and collaborate efficiently.
Meta: Become efficient in conducting online meetings among team members and concentrate everyone’s collective effort to achieve the goal of your company.
