Perhaps more than any other topic related to meeting effectiveness, managers and leaders are looking for ways to keep people engaged. And this is especially true for virtual meetings. Regardless of your meeting type, mode and format, one of the best ways to measure a meeting’s value is how engaged attendees were and how much value they derived from their participation and experience with others.
Here are 10 ways to maximize engagement during your virtual meetings.
1. Deliver value. Before you start your meeting, be clear about how you will deliver value to attendees. You should be able to state that value in a simple and concise sentence like, “In today’s meeting, you’ll receive information about our company’s latest strategic priorities, so you’ll be better equipped to maximize your team’s contribution to the business.”
2. Only invite stakeholders who need to be in attendance. Each person in a meeting potentially adds to the meeting’s length. Make sure you are only including people who are essential to your meeting outcome.
3. Start and stop on time. While it may be more easily said than done, starting and stopping your meetings on time creates trust with participants and demonstrates that you know their time is valuable. Participants will be more likely to stay present during your meetings since they know their time will be respected.
4. Use check-ins and check-outs. Open each meeting with a fun or interesting activity.
5. Always celebrate something. Make your meetings a positive experience. Choose a recent team achievement (no matter how small!), a birthday or an individual accomplishment to celebrate at your meetings.
6. Ask good questions to capture the imagination of your participants. Questions allow you to focus your attendees’ attention exactly where you want it to be. Participants are called upon to use their minds and creativity to respond and are responsible for creating value for the topic being discussed.
7. Create small groups to discuss questions you pose about specific topics. The smaller the group, the more engagement is required. If a group only has two or three people, there is nowhere for a participant to hide. In comparison, groups of six or more people make it easier for some to avoid participation and for others to dominate the speaking time.
8. Use voting to give participants a voice in driving the decision. Ask people to raise their hands, use chat or voting apps, blind ballots or other voting methods to poll your participants. Voting makes people feel useful and captures their attention as they become interested in the voting results and their implications.
9. Request no multi-tasking, no Mute. Up front, there are two requests you can make of all virtual participants to significantly raise the level of attention and engagement. First, request – or make it part of your ground rules – that participants do not work on other tasks during the meeting. It’s no secret that in an effort to get as much done as possible, we tend to multi-task during important discussions. Research shows that this type of behavior results in lower productivity than focused attention on one task.
Ask your participants to be 100% present. This means not doing other things like reading or answering emails, texts or unrelated content. It also means not browsing the internet or playing online games.
Also ask participants not use their mute buttons. Using mute allows people to go unnoticed as their activity during the call cannot be heard. By requesting that participants do not use the mute feature, you are raising their attention to their presence during the meeting. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, particularly when someone is dialing in from a noisy location. In these cases, most tools will also allow the meeting leader to mute attendees if they notice distractions from background noise.
10. Collect meeting feedback after the meeting. Requesting feedback shows participants that their experiences matter and they’ll be more likely to help improve future meetings. It’s also a way to keep participants engaged even after the meeting ends.
Online and remote meeting engagement doesn’t just happen by itself. It takes a thoughtful meeting organizer who understands the impacts of remote work and compels the attention of participants in a positive way.
Start with a few of these tips and see the difference it makes in your virtual meetings. Then, add a few more and see how it just keeps getting better.
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