Leadership Tips: 16 Proven Ideas That Will Make Your Virtual Meetings Zoom!!

Time to Read: 2 mins…

We are all continuing to learn how to conduct effective meetings online. I reached out to an expert I have known a long time for advice.

Ken Loughridge is a highly skilled project management executive based out of Christchurch, New Zealand. Ken has led a variety of remote teams both locally and inter-nationally – one team had members located in the USA, UK, India and New Zealand. They crossed multiple time zones, the dateline, and the equator. Not sure you could lead a more geographically diverse team.

Here are some of Ken’s suggestions that will improve your virtual meetings:

1. 1Have regular communication with your team – don’t be sporadic.
2. 2Make sure you stay in touch with and support team members individually. When leading a remote team, it is usually very hard to know how individual team members are doing – the leader needs to make extra effort to stay meaningfully connected.
3. 3Listen to the energy of the team’s communication. You can get a sense of both individual and group morale and enthusiasm by how they are communicating.
4. 4Make sure the tech works and you know how to operate it before the start of a meeting.
5. 5Schedule the meeting to start 5 or 10 min after the hour and then begin right on time. People often schedule themselves back-to-back and then run late. This gives them a cushion so they can be on time for your meeting.
6. 6Not every meeting needs to be scheduled for a full hour. Some can be 15 minutes or less. Be very efficient in the use of time. Your people will appreciate it.
7. 7Send out an agenda in advance – list what will be discussed and how much time is allocated for each topic. If you don’t have a timed agenda, your meetings will wander, lose focus, and take much longer than needed.
8. 8Put talkative/dominant people toward the end of the agenda.
9. 9After the meeting, send a summary bullet point list of actions to be taken, responsibilities, and the results of any previous action items.
10. 10It is very important for everyone on remote teams to have a way to see and track project status. To facilitate this, Ken uses online Kanbanscheduling tools such as Asana, Trello and Jira. (www.asana.com, www.trello.com, Jira Atlassian)
11. 11Share photos of home / office environments / pets / family / favorite object in their office space.
12. 12Celebrate birthdays and special events.
13. 13Find creative ways to get to know each other better.
14. 14Ask what support and resources they need to get the job done.
15. 15Celebrate small wins – don’t wait until the end of the project to high five.
16. 16And, make sure you listen and show that you care about them and the work.

Many of these suggestions can be applied to all meetings, not just virtual ones.

Action Steps:

 – Pick an item or two from Ken’s list that fit for your team and try them in your next meeting

 

What else would you add to the list? – share them below

 

Charles St.John