While holding team meetings is a tried-and-true method for disseminating information and fostering collaboration, maintaining focus and engagement is always challenging. It becomes even more difficult when you’re connecting virtually rather than in person. Yet by planning properly and deploying subtle visual cues like using the same office background, you’ll boost attentiveness at your next online conference.
Sizing It Right
The first step in planning your meeting is determining who to invite. Although you aren’t limited by the space of your conference room, keeping meeting sizes to a minimum is still a smart move. This gives everyone more time to talk and share their ideas, and it also reduces the opportunities for participants to zone out, thinking they won’t be noticed.
Sending out an Agenda
Once you know who’ll be participating in your meeting, plan your agenda. You’ll want to include all of your key meeting points, of course, but you should also carve out time for introductions, ice-breaker activities, and breaks. Send your agenda out well ahead of your meeting so everyone knows what to expect and will be ready to focus on the topic(s) at hand. Providing a detailed agenda is especially important if you need participants to prepare materials or to take a specific role in the presentation.
Creating Unity
Building a sense of cohesiveness and connection is challenging when attendees aren’t in the same room. Fortunately, there is a simple way to make people feel that they are together, even if they are miles apart. Asking participants to launch their Teams background with company logo makes everyone feel like they’re sharing the same space and keeps them more engaged.
Staying on Track
To keep minds from wandering, stick to your agenda and limit tangential discussions. Designate someone to take notes, so that if important, but unrelated, information comes up, you are able to follow up later without derailing the meeting.
In most cases, there’s a fine line between encouraging participation and allowing someone to dominate the conversation with topics that are of little interest to the group as a whole. If you’ve got a team that tends to get off track easily, consider setting a floor-time limit.
Leaving Time for Questions
To ensure your meeting’s message was clearly understood, carve out time at the end to address attendee questions. Whether you go through submissions made via a chat tool during your presentation or simply open the floor, allowing people the time to clarify their concerns or confusion fosters a sense of give-and-take that makes everyone present feel like active participants.
Now that you’ve gotten some great tips for increasing engagement, it’s time to prepare for your next virtual meeting. If you haven’t already designed an office background featuring your logo for your team to use while connecting online, that’s the perfect place to start. Simply browse your options by visiting the website of a top meeting tools designer, create your backdrop, and send it out to staff. That way, you’ll have one key component already in place to boost focus at your next virtual conference.
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