5 tips for improving your digital meeting habits

Productivity at many companies materializes with people and through people. We default to meetings to drive this productivity. When COVID-19 came along we all had to work from home, from behind a screen. Under the heading of ‘the new normal’ most people have integrally transitioned all their office meetings to an online setting, without breaks, stretching from early mornings to late evening ‘because you don’t have travel time’. Here are some reminders for more artful way of online meetings (written in collaboration with my work buddy Klazien van Vliet).

1. Deciding on goal & meeting form

Now that you’re spending 8 hours a day or more meeting from behind a screen, you may have started to wonder “Is this all really necessary?”. People meet for different reasons.

The goal you want to achieve informs the optimal way of working together. Is your aim to:

• Connect
• Brainstorm
• Create
• Decide
• Share information

Ask yourself: do you need a collaboration form that informs, makes decisions, generates inputs? You may find a phone call, an email, a quick check-in, or a walk outside is a better alternative to achieve your goal. Or that a well-prepared meeting will take you less time to achieve better results. Clearly communicate the goal of your meeting in the invitation and at the start of the meeting.

2. Define clear roles

Consider who needs to be part of the collaboration and for what reason. Who doesn’t need to be at the meeting, but can be informed afterwards? If you decide to meet virtually allocate roles and responsibilities. Communicate these roles clearly upfront so everyone knows what is expected and who to turn to with questions.

• The host is responsible for sending out the invite and meeting link
• If not the host, decide who will chair or facilitate the meeting
• A facilitator or chair ensures a process towards an aspired outcome is followed, and that all participants contribute
• Decide who is responsible for time-keeping and taking minutes
• Especially in virtual meeting settings, you may want to have a role readily available providing technical support

 3. Participate with intention: for ALL participants

An online meeting starts with proper preparation by all participants and is not only the responsibility of the chair or facilitator (as if you didn’t know ;-). Every participant needs to take responsibility for their attendance: artful participation. You claim the time and energy of various people, you better do it in a respectful and constructive way. Sounds like a no brainer, right? In preparation, ask yourself:

• Is my attendance truly necessary and why? Is my contribution valuable?
• Where are my interactions with others unhelpful or ineffective?
• Do I have the right program or tools (for example Trello, Miro, Jamboard), do I have a notebook, paper and a marker at hand?
• Is your laptop/camera at eye level? How is the light, the sound?
• What else do I need to participate in a more artful manner? Other information, skills, people that I need to speak with?

Prepare the meeting by considering your role, your personal goal, what you’ll bring and need from the other participants.  

• What have I been working on the past period (day/week/..)?
• What is my goal for the next period?
• Who or what do I need to proceed or speed up? What are my obstacles in achieving my goals?
• When is my contribution to this project/work complete? 

Set a clear intention for how you enter the conversation. For example: how do you handle the various stakes of people, how do you engage with their personalities? Consider their views on the topic, and also empathize with their situation. Do they work from home with kids? Do they take part in this meeting in between other meetings? Did they just work a double shift? 

4. Digital participation and engagement

Many people are experienced in the use of online meeting platforms such as Zoom, Webex, MS Teams, Google Hangouts. And still, we encounter too many situations where participants are not familiar with the functionalities and buttons. This hinders the ease of participation and collaboration. The meeting etiquette isn’t always clear: do you raise your hand if you want to say something, will you just start shouting or is there a role for a host who makes sure everyone is heard..?

Don’t make assumptions. Encourage participants to get comfortable with the meeting platform before the meeting, for example by sharing the link to a test-meeting (this is the one for Zoom: https://zoom.us/test). Share the meeting etiquette in the invite or at the start of the meeting.

An example of meeting etiquette from one of our workshops conducted on Zoom:

• Have your camera on as much as possible
• Mute yourself in the plenary meeting when you’re not speaking or contributing, to avoid background noise. Unmute yourself during breakout sessions to enable fluent brainstorm and discussion
• At the bottom of your screen, you find the buttons ‘participants’ and ‘chat’ – please open both windows during the meeting
• Chat functionality is used to share links. We won’t use the chat for reactions on the presentations or for discussion. We’ll focus on the plenary brainstorm only
• Use the ‘reactions’ buttons in the right corner at the bottom of your screen to show the presenters your enthusiasm

Use the proper tools fitting the goals of the meeting (and don’t use tools like Miro.com or Whiteboard for the sake of it; sometimes the chat is the most effective option to generate the input you’re looking for). More tips on facilitating a workshop or brainstorm session can be found in a previous post.

5. Take ownership

You now have some practical tips you can apply immediately to improve your digital meeting habits resulting in more effective meetings. Our challenge to you? Review your calendar; what is the next meeting on your schedule? Taking into consideration what you’ve read here, ask yourself: “Do I really need to be in this meeting?” and “What can I do to make this meeting more effective and purposeful?”.

Want to be smarter about your virtual meetings? Sign up for the webinar in collaboration with Klazien van Vliet.