How To Run A Successful Remote Meeting

Perhaps the most important thing about running a remote meeting is the tool you use to run it. Different team and meeting arrangements may call for different types of tools. If you’re meeting with someone for the first time, or you’re meeting with people in a country whose meeting tools you aren’t familiar with, consider asking them ahead of time which tools they’d prefer. Not everyone is familiar with the ones you use on a day-to-day basis, and you don’t want to add any stress to the meeting around logistics. “Once you have a list of goals, it’s easy to plan your team meetings in more detail. Prepare an agenda in which you identify the main talking points and subjects you wish to discuss.

At that point, one person should just take the lead instead of being overly apologetic and just talk. Many remote meeting tools are designed to work primarily over internet connections. But what happens if someone’s internet goes down or slows down? It’s important to give the option for folks to listen to the meeting and talk over the phone.

Formstack’s workplace productivity platform helps over 25,000+ organizations digitize what matters, automate workflows, and fix processes—all without code. Forms Power your data collection with versatile online forms that don’t require any coding to set up. That Future of Time report from Adobe reveals that using too many apps can generate stress and burn out. “We can easily feel inundated by the number of channels and platforms we’re expected to interact with in a remote world,” Menlo Ventures partner Naomi Ionita told me. It’s also important to agree on a clear code of meeting etiquette designed to give all parties some chance to express themselves, while applying some constraints to those who like to dominate discussion. Thinking also extends to what you do before and after meetings.

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Because, while remote meetings were thrust into the spotlight like never before during the COVID19 crisis, it’s obvious that they’re here to stay. Research-based insights can improve your remote meetings and keep participants engaged. Video calls are great, but spending all day on them is exhausting — and could ultimately sabotage remote team productivity.

Keeping Remote Team Members Engaged During Online Meetings

Zoom has become the go-to remote meeting app for most people, but it doesn’t work for all organizations . Leading a team meeting can be tough even in the best of circumstances. You have to make sure everyone stays engaged, feels welcome to participate and can comfortably raise any issues. But you also have an agenda you need to get through and objectives to accomplish. Establishing rules and catchphrases also can help move the conversation along, said Mark Tippin, a virtual collaboration author at MURAL. The 140-person distributed company headquartered in San Francisco produces a digital workspace used by 40 percent of Fortune 100 global enterprise firms.

Always reserve a time to give each other recognition for work well done and embodying team values. This is the time to break down blockers together and improve your work methods, so don’t be shy to discuss your remote work challenges during your retrospective meetings. Ask people to volunteer to help keep the meeting on track and keep meeting notes of what’s discussed. Remote meetings can be just as productive and engaging as in-person—but only when they’re managed effectively.

Not only is this bad for the brain; it’s bad for the team. Managers should set a firm policy that multitasking is unacceptable, as it’s important for everyone to be mentally present. Several years ago, my company’s Research Institute embarked on an exploration of the “New People Rules in a Virtual World” to explore how technology is shaping our relationships and how we collaborate. This multiyear journey also evolved my thinking on the subject, helping me recognize that virtual is not the enemy of the physical if key rules and processes are maintained and respected. So, how can you make the most of their time and ensure they have the best meeting experience?

Want To Run Better Remote Meetings? Try These Strategies

Whichever tool you choose, be sure to include links, dial-in numbers, and passcodes in the meeting invite. Weak internet connections can affect meeting quality. If someone has bad Wi-Fi, they can’t contribute to the meeting. My colleague Corey Wainwright describes it like driving up to a four-way stop with other cars who get there at the same time. Everyone’s gesturing and mouthing to one another, “You go,” “No, you go,” “No, it’s fine, you go! There are a lot of great time zone apps out there, but we recommend World Time Buddy.

Listed below are some practices that will help you run a highly effective remote meeting from the comfort of your own home. If you’re thinking, “Yes, but this has always been true,” you’re right. But as noted above, working remotely tends to expose in-person practices that are already problematic. If there is one thing you should do right now, it’s to examine your meeting culture, and your assumptions about what good looks like. In a remote environment, meetings are your lifeline, your connection, your glue to the rest of the team.

Effective Virtual Meetings: Best Practices To Run Successful Remote Meetings Attendees Will Love

And if does happen later, you’re violating the ethics of the team. Want more tips and guidelines on writing effective meeting minutes or meeting notes? Instead of including everyone in every meeting, invite only the people who are really relevant for the meeting.

Stop the “invite everyone just in case” mentality and invite only those willing to work on a specific task and use the meeting time to get something done. A good rule of thumb is that if the in-person meeting is terrible, the remote version of the same will be exponentially more so. This means that, in a remote working environment, the way you run meetings becomes crucial to the productivity and cohesion of the team.

To create focus, which is often lacking in remote meetings, try organizing the agenda as a set of questions to be answered rather than a set of topics to be discussed. By framing agenda items as questions, you have a better sense of who really has to be invited to the meeting. Once the questions have been answered, you know when to end the meeting — and you can easily gauge if the meeting has been successful. The agenda for an effective remote group meeting needs to be a little different from how you would plan your meeting agenda in the office. For one, you’ll need to plan wiggle-room time so distractions don’t throw you off schedule. Kids, pets, spouses, technical problems, and the desire to catch up on some watercooler chat time are all factors that come into play when planning the agenda for your remote meeting.

Set up automated meeting reminders – for examples, you can set up Slack reminders for regular meetings, or you can also use Zapier to connect your Google Calendar and Slack to send out notifications. According to a straw poll within Zapier, if there are five or fewer people on the call, don’t mute yourself. If there are six or more, mute unless you’re the person currently talking. It’s relatively easy to control a chatty audience in an in-person meeting because everyone’s in the same room.

Leadership Meetings

You might think that because everyone is working remotely that you need more meetings for ‘face-to-face’ time. You’ll find that many of your employees love the ability to focus without interruption and get more done that way. You’ll also find that the extroverts in the office may suffer.

• Please note that we will add you to our list to receive HBDI® and Whole Brain® Thinking communications.
• It’s also a form of virtual team building, as your team gets to know each other and work together.
• You can later attach it with the recap email or share it on your Slack channel to give access to others.
• However, remote employees don’t have as many opportunities to have informal conversations as people who work at the same office.

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Meeting Tools

With these tactics in your toolbox, remote meetings will run more smoothly, and you’ll know exactly what to do the next time your pet interrupts a meeting. Do you need to be able to see everyone’s reactions as you share new product ideas? Do you need everyone to be able to work on a press release collaboratively?

What Are The Challenges Of Leading A Remote Team?

Of course, some remote teams are large, and it would consume a lot of time if all the participants were to introduce themselves. In that case, the meeting leader and attendees who will handle topics on the agenda should introduce themselves. Therefore, schedule ten to fifteen minutes of introduction to engage the attendees during the meeting. In this next section, I’ll share specific examples of remote team meetings at companies I’ve worked for. I’ll outline the benefits and drawbacks of each approach.

Meetings are effective when they are used to discuss ideas, have debates, or explore connections between ideas that explore an issue from different perspectives. In order to have insightful discussions, the meeting participants must already have done some deep thinking around the meeting topics. Deep thinking is primarily a solo activity and should be done asynchronously, before the meeting. This allows the participants to bring well-thought-out ideas to the discussion and then discuss them thoroughly. These are our best tips to make the most out of your remote meetings.

So, make sure to use your body or objects in virtual meetings. For example, you can play with the distance between you and your camera. Just the same way you would do, if you were delivering a speech to an audience. Only this way will you avoid the typical “I can’t see/hear you” or “You’re cutting off” experiences which makes others loose time while you are trying to fix your tech.

Remote meeting software providers like Zoom, make it easy to set up your meeting so remote attendees can participate. Research and compare your options to see which ones will work best for you and your remote team members. Due to connectivity issues or delays, sometimes it’s hard to avoid accidentally talking over each other in a remote meeting. To make it easier for everyone to hear, try to pause and leave space for silence at the right time, so that other people can give feedback or contribute if they want to.

How Can Technology Make Online Meetings More Efficient?

Clearly, you’ll need to take this into account when booking your meeting. If you’re the one setting up the meeting, be sure to set it for a time that works for everyone on the attendee list. There’s nothing worse than realizing you’ve been scheduled for a meeting that’s at 6 AM your time—or in the evening when you’d normally have other plans. Sign up for our monthly newsletter full of meeting productivity and collaboration tips, tricks and real-world examples.

Sharing a written recap as well as a full recording is helpful both for people who attend live to retain the information, but also for those who are out that day or otherwise unable to attend. Collect your key information ahead of time and structure it clearly so you can effectively deliver your message. Have a slide deck that highlights these key points so people can keep up easily. Regular status updates are a must for keeping projects moving forward, especially for dispersed teams. Depending on the project, you might have these daily or weekly.

There is no harm in asking for feedback about how inclusive people feel in your meetings. It’s also good to ask if your leadership style is working to make everyone feel included. As the meeting leader you are a host, almost like the host of a party. Have you ever been at a party where the host is in a bad mood?

Meetings at Hugo follow the SMART rule, adhering to topics that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. For a company that has “a 10 percent rule,” meaning employees can only spend 10 percent of their work week in internal meetings, the goal is to reduce hour-long meetings to just 30 minutes. Clearly outline meeting takeaways to eliminate confusion and hold people accountable.