7 Tips for successful remote 1:1 meetings

It’s always a good idea to test your camera, headphones, and microphone before your first virtual meeting. If you’re leading a remote meeting from a corporate office, make sure the projector or any other tool you’re using works. Your team will feel more relaxed and engaged if you start your meetings by talking about non-work related topics first. However, if you’re meeting with three or more people, you’ll want to use a dedicated video conferencing tool. For “techies” like me, using new meeting software is part of the job . Otherwise, you’ll spend 10 minutes installing, 10 minutes learning how to share your screen, and 10 minutes discussing how hard that all was.

The purpose of these tips is to ensure the online meeting is smooth, all attendees participate, and employees stay focused. Keeping teams engaged helps them make the best use of the information provided. These tips are helpful for hosts conducting a remote meeting for the first time as well. The pandemic accelerated the use and evolution of videoconference technology to enable virtual meetings from PCs, tablets, and phones. As providers invest heavily to better enable hybrid meetings, new features are being introduced to improve face-to-face communication among in-person and remote attendees.

However, despite this huge boom in virtual collaboration and communication, there are still some fundamental dos and don’ts for running great online meetings that are frequently overlooked. If you run great virtual team meetings, these will provide you with countless opportunities. Losing focus in virtual meetings can make participants lose interest and start working on their tasks instead of participating in the conversation. So, to avoid such derailment, you could prevent non-topic meetings. Try to agree on the track of the conference before you meet with the other participants.

How to Run a Meeting Key Takeaways

Alignment Get your people in the same mindset with OKR goals and 1-on-1 meetings. If your meeting only needs all participants for a part of the time, do that first, and tell those people to feel free to leave when they are no longer necessary. It’s essential to check with the attendees’ own schedule before fixing a time for the meeting.

For instance, if you schedule a 30-minute meeting but spoke for 45, this is a good sign that you’re trying to cover too much in one go. Remember, a lot of freelancers don’t get paid by the hour or day. That means that every minute of your catch-up call could be a minute of unpaid work for your remote employee. As a remote manager, particularly in startups, you could be looking after freelancers who need to manage their time a lot more efficiently than most. Lots of managers forget about time in one-on-one meetings. As a remote manager, make sure your home office is not full of background distractions that could make it challenging to give your staff your full attention.

Ask participants to contribute

And sometimes you need to schedule more than one meeting during the day. Again, that’s OK, but when it comes to hybrid and remote meetings, staring at a bright screen with tiny boxes for an extended time can cause eye strain and is taxing on concentration. You can successfully run a Zoom meeting by using the right features and planning ahead. The host should check the mic, camera, and recording features and control when the participants speak. The members should also eliminate background noises for effective communication during Zoom meetings. Apart from that, you can use the Zoom background feature to provide a unique experience.

However, running a successful remote team meeting can be challenging. Different time zones, communication gaps, and technical issues are the greatest problems in virtual meetings. In an in-person meeting, it’s easy to try and include everyone because you’re all in the same room.

Choose The Best Space For Virtual Meetings

That can be a FYI, a clear ask or a clear point of discussion. Be careful to not create a culture where being in a meeting means you’re important. If you are using a task management tool, you can quickly plan everything on it. You can also use an action plan template to get things prioritized. You can mention these guidelines in the introductory email you send along with the agenda.

HBR Learning’s online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Meeting Management. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies. When these potential issues are not taken into account, team motivation for the project or subject can quickly evaporate. What would normally take half an hour can drag on into an endless video call that no one wants to be in. Your permanent meeting room should save all the documents and links you shared during the last meeting so they’re ready for the next one whenever you need.

Luxshare Chairman Wang Laichun Leads New Forbes China List Of Top 100 Businesswomen

Unlike in-person meetings, the host and attendees cannot use their body language to communicate ideas. Instead, words are the best source of conveying information how to run a successful remote meeting and ideas in virtual meetings. The participants of formal meetings should follow the same rules in remote meetings as they would during in-person meetings.

She leads initiatives such as influencer marketing, SEO management, and social media to name a few. Outside of work, Rad enjoys traveling, working out, and spending time with her family and friends. Collaborating and staying on track can make your work days more efficient and productive. Finding the right software for your meetings will help individual members stay connected and your company’s overall growth. Making video chats interactive is a great way to keep team members engaged. Having a safe space where employees can really deep dive and fully understand the task at hand will ensure a smooth and speedy project.

• The time your team has together, whether in-person or virtually, is crucial to keeping everyone connected, engaged, and productive.
• Many best practices for an online meeting are the same as they would be for an in-person meeting—they just need a little tweaking.
• Using the same example, it may be up to the meeting facilitator to check the chatbox for virtual participant questions and poll those in the room to ensure everyone’s questions are answered.
• Make sure to have a video call for remote team members, an agenda or spreadsheet to keep track of progress in work, and order some food to keep the atmosphere energized and informal.
• A meeting agenda outlines exactly what the meeting will cover and often allots a specific amount of time for each topic or meeting point.
• A great meeting invites a feeling of safety amongst team members by welcoming new ideas and removing the fear of public criticism.

Co-ordinating the Dispatch blog, I use Trello to keep in touch with our freelancer network of writers and graphic designers. Other tools like G-Suite or SharePoint provide similar functionality – just make sure everyone is on the same page. But running a remote or hybrid meeting isn’t the same as an in-person meeting. No matter how large or small a meeting is, here are some tips to make your next hybrid or remote meeting more effective and productive. Organizing remote meetings is fun and easy if you use the right strategies and tips. Although conducting a remote meeting for the first time might seem difficult, the process can go smoothly if you have preplanned the meeting and the deliverables.

Then learn, reflect, and try some new things based on the feedback. Now that we have been meeting remotely for some time — and may continue for the foreseeable future — the timing may be ideal for this step. The members of a remote workforce are in different locations and time zones.

Strategically Choose Attendees + Appoint Important Roles

In addition to meeting software, you’ll need to think about the AV technology you’ll need. Your video conferencing hardware can make or break your meeting experience. Poor audio or video connection can derail a productive meeting. It’s 360° video camera, microphones, and speakers help remote team members feel like they’re attending the meeting in-person. Running a virtual meeting is not the same as an in-person meeting. Here are seven tips for running engaging and productive remote meetings.

Breaking Down Zoom Fatigue

The 2019 State of Remote Work report found 14% of remote workers are dedicating time to more than 10 meetings per week (vs. only 3% of on-site workers). Meetings are also a great way to build relationships and facilitate team bonding. Though planning and organization help all meetings go off without a hitch, running a hybrid meeting takes extra planning and organization. But putting in the effort can help your hybrid meetings be efficient and productive ones that your team wants to attend.

The meeting tool you use plays an integral part in the success of your remote team meeting. Depending on the nature of the meeting (video or audio-only), choose the tool that suits your specific needs. Here are the crucial factors to consider when picking a virtual meeting tool. The good news is that you can run effective virtual meetings if you stick to the best practices. This article will walk you through what to do before, during, and after a virtual team meeting to ensure it’s highly effective. When you really understand the challenges your remote or distributed team is facing in their day-to-day, you can use that to improve your remote meetings and make them more engaging.

Give everyone a job

Establish guidelines when the meeting starts to ensure that participants feel comfortable speaking and sharing their ideas while remaining respectful of others and not getting too off-topic. Whether remote or in-person, effective meetings are crucial for teamwork and productivity. Let’s dive into the steps to conduct a productive remote meeting.

Depending on your needs, you’ll likely want something that has audio and video components, as well as chat and screen-sharing abilities. Keep in mind that you may have to try out a few programs before you find the one that clicks with your team. Using videoconferencing is a better solution to run a meeting in this manner. It can provide a visual reminder that remote workers are attending the meeting, and it’s likely the remote employees will value being able to see what’s happening. This can lead to remote employees feeling isolated or ignored.