I have working remotely with clients for more than five years. As soon as the technology was feasible for use that allowed me to go beyond a phone meeting, I was there. I’ve always been an early adopter when it comes to these technology kinds of things. Ever since, I’ve come to be a faithful paying Zoom customer. It’s one of those few technology subscriptions that I really don’t mind paying for. Their service is easy to use, flexible and the sound and video quality are very good and reliable. Simply put, it just works.
Over my time using Zoom, I’ve come to learn what works and what doesn’t work in virtual meetings when it comes to the technology part of the equation. There are four features that I believe can take your virtual meetings to the next level when using Zoom as your platform. But first, let’s talk about an easy to use set up for meetings, trainings, webinars and workshops.
Setup for Success
For the best results, use a dual monitor set up. This means you have either two computer screens or you use your phone or tablet as your second screen. Most people today have their laptop and phone which is all you need to operate with two screens. The larger your screens are, the more comfortable your setup will be.
When you are in a meeting or even more importantly, when you are delivering a training or facilitating a session, use one screen just for the presentation that participants are viewing. If there is no presentation, then you can use that same screen for a grid view of all the participants. When delivering a training or workshop virtually, there is usually a presentation, so it should go on one screen by itself. Put PowerPoint notes view, the Zoom chat, the grid view of participants and breakout rooms all on the second screen. This may seem like a lot of different items to be open on one screen, but you are only going to use one of those items on the second screen at a time. If you need to chat, you just use the chat. If you need to see notes, they are there. I work with a notebook and an external 27-inch monitor that use as the display where I setup all of the above.
Most important about this setup is that the presentation is on one screen and your participant grid is on the other screen. This allows you to present and see everyone’s faces, reactions, and gestures at the same time. And going back and forth between chat, notes, and breakout rooms is easy because they are all there open waiting to be used on your second screen. Your eyes are always focused ahead of you, you can reference your facilitation notes while maintaining visual contacts with a large number of the participants. This is a killer setup.
Now let’s take a look at four features that when combined with this setup will take your virtual meetings and trainings to a professional level.
The Grid View
With Zoom you can choose to see no one or you can see all the other people in the meeting. When you want to see all the other people in the meeting, you can choose between seeing them as a strip of little views that you can place on either side of your desktop or at the top or bottom of your desktop. This is particularly useful for meetings with only a few people. If more than 5 people are in the meeting, then to see more people you have to advance the strip forward. This will allow you to see new faces of people who are also in the meeting, but then you won’t see the first five that you had just been viewing. That’s why the strip view is best for meetings with five people or less.
More powerful still, is the Grid setting in Zoom. This allows you to see as many as twenty people on the screen at one time. It seems like a logical no brainer feature to offer, yet many other online meeting platforms still don’t have it at the time I am writing this article. When facilitating sessions or doing remote teachings, this is a fundamental feature. It allows us to maintain visual contact with the audience and read their body language as the delivery progresses. It’s as close to being there as you can get virtually.
Virtual Flip-charting
You are likely accustomed to using flip charts in meetings. They are a great, simple solution to capturing information in real-time and having it available for reference throughout the rest of the meeting. You just write down what’s needed on the flip chart, put it on the wall, and continue your meeting.
Zoom has a whiteboard function that can be used as a flip chart. However, I love using my tablet and pen as the whiteboard - creating a very flexible and powerful handwriting experience. Here’s how...
Log into the meeting with a tablet device and its corresponding pencil tool. When you want to take notes as if using a flip-chart, use a note-taking app on your tablet using its pencil tool. You can also do this using a smart phone that has a pencil tool. If not, you can still do it, but will have to type the information which on a phone is not as practical. But with a tablet device and its corresponding pencil tool, it’s a fluid and graceful experience that provides a different way to engage with the audience. When I’m presenting complicated frameworks or models or reviewing and Excel file, I usually print the file to a PDF and then share the PDF on screen and scribble over it as I present. Works very well.
Breakout Rooms
At trivium we spend a lot of our time facilitating business meetings. It’s a core aspect of what we do. Breakout rooms allow us a lot of versatility when designing and facilitating work sessions. It is one of the most powerful features of Zoom.
Breakouts allow you to easily split the audience into several independent rooms where they can work in pairs or small groups. While doing so, as the host, you can broadcast messages and notifications, as well as jump into a room and see how the teams are doing. We use this a lot to do small group practice or solutioning sessions. Once breakout groups have completed their task, you can easily bring them back to the ‘main room’ and debrief in plenary. Super easy to use and just as powerful as breakout rooms in real-world in person meetings.
Setting up breakout rooms is as easy as clicking a button. When you do, you will be prompted to choose how many rooms you want and whether or not you want to assign people automatically or manually. Moving people around is extremely easy and intuitive. If you are managing a very large session, you can upload the list of participants ahead of time and pre-configure the breakouts before the meeting starts.
Polling
This is another very powerful feature that helps you gather information and engage participants quickly and easily. It’s especially useful when working with larger groups, or for situations wherein people would prefer anonymity. You can use this feature to ask questions of any kind including closed and open questions or to test for agreement when consensus building. Get people’s reaction to ideas, concepts, or images in seconds. Ask participants how the meeting is going for them and identify areas that may need further attention. Quickly find out if people understand what is being discussed. Zoom’s polling feature is a great way to engage the audience and also have a sense of how the delivery is landing with the participants or their perceptions about a given business topic.
Conclusions
Zoom is a great online meeting platform with robust features that are easy to use. Best of all, Zoom’s free version has all you need to produce professional live online meetings, trainings and workshops for up to 100 people. To get the most out of Zoom and have your virtual experiences be of a professional grade, you have to first get yourself setup correctly. That means using two screens, be they two computer monitors, a laptop and a monitor or as simple as a laptop and a smart phone.
Once you have yourself set up, by using Grid view on one monitor while having your presentation on the other monitor you can clearly follow people’s reactions and facial gestures. By using a note taking app, you can have virtual flip charts and have the proverbial “Parking Lot” at your fingertips. Using Zoom’s Breakout Rooms feature allows you to easily move people around, break them into pairs or small groups of any size, communicate with them while in their breakout rooms and be able to move in and out of rooms to observe or interact with groups. Finally, Zoom’s polling feature allows you to quickly gather rich information from participants. The applications of the polling feature are as great as your imagination.
By getting yourself setup right and using the four features described, you can manage regular business meetings with ease and help people engage beyond the perceived limits of being virtual. You can conduct small, medium and large trainings with ease and do so to a high professional standard. If you do not use Zoom, it’s worth trying out if you are looking to upgrade your virtual experience. If you already use Zoom, you can take your virtual work to the next level, a truly professional video conferencing experience.
Hope you find this information useful and please let me know any other features that have made the difference for you in your online Zoom meetings.
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