Virtual Meetings That Feel Real Are Possible
I was recently in a Zoom meeting and a participant said,
“ I don’t know about you all, but when I am in these meetings it is hard for me to believe it is actually real.”
They were talking about the lack of human interaction, but I often have the same thought about virtual meetings when it feels like anything I say just disappears into the ether. I don’t see anyone writing it down, putting it on a post it, or repeating it back and saying, “What do others think about that comment?” The facilitative practices that I enjoy seem much harder in the virtual space, but let’s be honest, a lot of meetings were lacking them in the real world too.
At See What I Mean, we have been helping people make virtual meetings feel real. In this post we will share a few methods that are effective for all types of online meetings.
Being a Good Host
Before thinking about how to present and engage with your meeting participants, we have to remember how to be good meeting hosts.
In an in-person setting, you often know the rules when you walk into a room to begin a meeting. You might know where you should sit, or a name tag is at a spot for you. Someone gives you the materials you will need for the meeting, tells you where the restrooms are, and sets expectations for how they would like you to show up (silence phones, close computers, etc.). We have found that being a good host in the virtual world can help to calm peoples’ nerves and set a tone for the meeting that prepares people to be in the virtual space with us. It also allows you to identify and deal with technical challenges before the moment you want to engage, and people don’t know where the chat box is located. We do this with a simple slide that is open when people come into the meeting, like the one below. Use it!
Balancing Your Approach
When designing a virtual meeting it is important to balance your approach. Methods for engagement in both virtual and in-person meetings range from Low Preparation to High Preparation; from tools you should use in every meeting to tools you should use in high-stakes meetings where you have time to prepare and the participants have the appropriate knowledge to engage.
Below, we will discuss some different tools in a balanced approach you may use if your purpose is to present and engage. You may use another mix of tools if you were looking to brainstorm, collaborate or make decisions.
Presenting + Engaging:
In person meetings that are slide deck heavy with little interaction can already be a drain on participants, but at least you normally have them in a room where you can attempt to hold their attention or make loud noises if they start to doze off. In the virtual world, it is harder and more important to present in a way that is engaging, and maximizes participant input.
Low Preparation: The easy way to do this in any virtual meeting is to utilize the chat function. It could be an engaging question at the beginning of the meeting like,
“What have you found to be the best way to keep focused during the at-home work day.”
Or, a more mission focused question like,
“How have you noticed that our mission is even more important during this time of crisis.”
Anything to let people know that you will be asking them to engage and stay engaged throughout the meeting.
If it is a small meeting, ask everyone to un-mute and answer the question aloud. If it is a larger meeting, or a group where people may not feel comfortable sharing out loud, have participants put their answer in the chat box and read a few of their responses. If time allows, ask a few people to elaborate on their response.
An alternative to the chat box is to open a shared document in Google or any collaborative tool you may use at your organization. Have some questions and engagements pre-populated, or type them in as you go, and let participants join in.
Medium Preparation: Don’t stop with an opening question, a Medium Preparation tool is the polling function in most video conference applications. It may take a little work ahead of time to make sure the poll is ready to go, but it is a fairly simple way to both gather information from participants throughout the meeting, and keep them looking at your screen.
Make sure the polls help you to gather information you actually need. You may want to use a fun question to get people comfortable with the tech, but after that ask questions that help you understand the perspective of the participants or make decisions. If important things are being discussed and voted on, people are more likely to give you their attention.
A tip about polls: Create a slide that also has the poll question you would like to ask with the answer response marked with number or letters like the one above. That way, if the polling function doesn’t work you can ask people to put their response in the chat.
High Preparation: In order to engage more deeply with participants, you may want to use a High Preparation visual tool. It is High Preparation because you need to think about the right tool to design/use for the question or challenge you want to deal with, and you have to figure out how the tech will work to create the engagement. We have been using an online tool called Mural to engage participants in brainstorming and collaboration, but you might need to use a more simple tool depending on the audience and the desired results. See Jenna’s blog about choosing the right tool for the right job.
This tool is called Pre-Mortem. We like to using it when we are starting a new project or program to think about all the ways it might go wrong so we can mitigate the failure from happening
A basic way to implement this high prep engagement is simply creating a slide with the tool you want to use, like the one here, and asking people to say out loud or write in the chat their responses.
When planning your meeting, do not feel the need to use multiple low, medium and high preparation tools. Think about the:
Amount of time you have for the meeting
Group you are meeting with
Goals you have for meeting
Time you have to prepare for the meeting
From there, assess the types of tools you might use to ensure that you can keep participants’ attention and meaningfully engage and gather input from them throughout the meeting.
Having an engaging meeting takes work to prepare, and that is even more true when trying to make virtual meetings feel real. If you are looking for a deeper dive into how to design and facilitate better virtual meetings, you can reach out about a customized Better Virtual Meetings workshop for your team, or schedule a facilitation coaching session with one of our expert consultants.
Author: Jordan Vernoy