Do you use Zoom or Teams for meetings? Are you bored of virtual meetings and how can you add the wow factor to your next one? USA Today have written a blog with some fantastic tips.
Don’t get bored at your next virtual meeting
First, make sure you actually need to hold a virtual meeting. Attendees should interact, ensure their voices and opinions are actually being solicited. This means: cut the monologues. If you’re making an announcement or sharing information that only requires your audience to listen, consider simply sending out an email.
Once a virtual meeting has been deemed necessary, try implementing these realistic tips to banish boredom, keep things interactive, and encourage participation.
Another virtual meeting? Make your next meeting more interesting with filters, polls and live animals. The important point to remember is make it interesting.
Set expectations
Before the meeting even starts, allow attendees to get into the right mindset by setting expectations for their participation. This will make sure participants will not be bored of virtual meetings.
Present a problem in the agenda and ask everyone prepare and present ideas for solutions. Request that all attendees be on video mode and in a quiet (or at least a private) space during the meeting. Set ground rules for conduct, such as “thou shalt put away phones and not work on other tasks”.
Dedicate time to checking in
Remote work can get lonely and isolating, so take some time before the meeting proper to let everyone share what they’ve been up to. Ask them about the highlights of their week or what challenges they’re currently facing. Better yet, get everyone to show appreciation to their fellow colleagues. Bored of virtual meetings will be a thing of the past with this type of communication.
Social bonding keeps team members engaged and encourages creativity, teamwork, and collaboration, so be sure to cultivate it even when on virtual platforms.
Let people take ownership
Assign people with tasks like time keeping, facilitating, and note taking. If you’re running an ice breaker or conducting a warm up (see below), you can assign one of the attendees to be in charge.
Also, ensuring that every attendee has a role – whether it’s decision maker, adviser, recommender or executor. This helps you keep meetings small, which is great because the more people at a meeting, the less engaged each person will be.
Start with an ice breaker
Jumpstart communication and break through awkwardness with ice breakers! Conducting a fun ice breaker will help activate the right brain. Set the stage for creativity and participation and get your attendees comfortable with speaking and interacting with each other. These are the perfect conditions for an effective virtual meeting.
Jazz up your material
Did you know that visuals increase engagement by as much as 94%? They also help increase audience attention and memory, boost feelings of inclusiveness, and encourage interaction. Try using visuals throughout your meeting to give context, illustrate a point, or provide levity.
Virtual IT Business Support
We understand the challenges we are currently facing in the business world. As well all know, there is nothing better than a face to face meeting. However, businesses need to be able to support their staff, clients and suppliers needs. Contact the LIS Help Desk to discuss your requirements.
Here at LIS we understand the challenges business are currently facing in this changing world. We all know there is nothing better than a face to face meeting, and all our clients get regular in-person contact from us, at least in normal times. However, most of our work (95%) is done remotely, often without our clients even knowing there was problem, let alone that we are fixing it! It’s second nature to our team because we have worked like that since we started nearly 25 years ago! So, if you have a bored technician who is making you sit through boring chat rather than just getting on with fixing your problem, call us. Our new clients tell us it is a refreshing change to enjoy calling tech support… it seems we fix people as well as systems. Who knew?
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