5 Quick Tips for Virtual Meetings
Put googly eyes on your webcam.
“Hey, that facilitated meeting we were planning has to be virtual.” I’ve heard this dozens of times in the 48 hours. The good news is, if you can do it in a room, you can do it online. Over the coming days, I’ll share best practices for you and your participants to make the transition to virtual meetings easier.
1. Show up 10 minutes early. That goes for everybody. Put this in your invites. Insist on it. The time is to make sure the audio-video is working, to install any surprise updates, to resolve tech challenges, to give participants a pause to orient themselves to the meeting about to happen, and to close out any loose ends that might prevent them from being present and engaged. And most importantly, it’s to test the virtual meeting platform.
2. Look at the camera lens. Even if you’re looking at shared content, if you’re not looking at someone in the eyes, you’re sending the subconscious message that you’re not listening. If you have two screens (like a laptop with a camera and a desktop monitor where you’re viewing content), this problem is compounded. If you can’t look at the camera lens, turn off the camera. Hint: I have googly eyes on my webcam to remind me of this.
3. Use Chat for comments and questions. Interruptions are especially disruptive during virtual meetings. If you have something to say that won’t wait, use the Chat feature in your webconference software. That allows the presenter to address questions and comments during pauses that don’t disrupt the flow of the meeting.
4. Practice the one-sip pause. This is something I learned from the godmother of virtual facilitation, Rachel Smith. After someone is done speaking, wait a beat before speaking yourself, about as long as it takes to take a sip of a warm beverage. This allows for lags in internet communications, which are longer than phone lags, to pass. The resulting pace is slower and more deliberate typical, energetic, in-the-room discussions. It takes some getting used to, but it creates meetings that have a calmer, measured atmosphere.
5. Stay on mute. Another piece of wisdom from Rachel Smith: if you have any noise in your background, you will be the last person to hear it. As a rule, stay on mute unless you are speaking. And, bonus! The time it takes to unmute yourself is about as long as the one-sip pause.
Take your facilitation practice online! If you can do it in the room, you can do it virtually. Our 3-hour Virtual Facilitation Workshop will show you how to convert your favorite modalities into a virtual environment. Click here for details.