With social distancing keeping many of us out of the office, it’s important to have productive virtual employee meetings. These sessions, which are sometimes called, team huddles, help set the stage for the day and prioritize tasks.
In the past, we’ve talked about how to improve these meetings when they’re in your office. Now leaders need to adapt to the virtual world and not everything is the same.
These five tips can give you a roadmap to make sure your virtual employee meeting are informative and productive.
Prepare and Focus
As a leader, you want your virtual meeting to be very focused and not waste time. Even if it’s just writing down a few words on a post-it note, know what you need to talk about. Don’t rely on your memory, especially because it’s harder to call everyone back, if you remember something after a session ends.
Later we’ll talk about how you can add some fun to your virtual meetings but make sure, before that, you’re giving people good focused information.
Arriving Early Defeats Tech Gremlins
Video conferencing technology isn’t perfect and sometimes it doesn’t play nice with your computer. There’s nothing worse than having to rush to make a virtual meeting, only to not be able to get in, or not be able to user your camera or microphone.
Instead, encourage your team to log in a minute or two early. This way, they can troubleshoot technology problems with solutions, like restarting computers, without delaying the session.
Make Your Meetings a Conversation
You may want to deliver a sermon, where you go through all of your points for the day. While this approach is efficient, it limits employee engagement.
While you may be tempted to make all of your remarks and then ask for questions, it’s better to allow for questions throughout the session.
A good way to do this is to make a point, then ask if there are any questions. Repeat this process after every point.
This way employees will ask questions when the issues are still top of mind. This format can also prevent tangents from taking over your meetings.
Remember Your Face
For a lot of people, communicating through a camera feels unnatural and impersonal. As a result, your facial expression may be more like a frown than a smile.
When you’re speaking to a group in a room, your audience has more things to look at, as opposed to having your face fill a screen for several minutes.
While you don’t want to fake emotions, in your virtual employee meetings, consider how you are coming across to your employees.
Even when things are challenging, it can help to convey a positive disposition. And it can be easily done through smiling.
End with Some Fun
Spend a couple of minutes, at the end of your meeting, doing a fun team engagement activity. These don’t need to take a of time.
If people have dogs at cats at home, maybe you have them bring out their animals for a moment. Some groups do contests or show and tell sessions, where everyone shares a something like a fun coffee mug or a funny hat.
For more on this tip, the chance to see me in a funny hat, and to take a deeper dive into the topic of virtual employee meetings, watch the video below.
You don’t have to have prizes or winners in your contests. This is just a chance to do some bonding and have some fun. It also gives people a chance to look forward to something at a time when there’s a lot of uncertainty about the future.
Your virtual employee meetings can produce productive days and improve morale.
Ken Okel Performs Virtual Keynotes Too
