Many of your work meetings are taking place virtually as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic? You’re already dreading dull conference calls?

It doesn’t have to be that way! This past week, we’d had to switch to offering workshops online and have facilitating multiple virtual meetings. Thankfully, we’re able to rely on years of experience doing so. I’m happy to share with you our expertise in hosting engaging virtual meetings and workshops.

Here are three recommendations for productive virtual collaboration:

First, use a tried and trusted technology for your virtual meetings – and make use of all of its features. We like to use Zoom – but not just for conference calls. Zoom offers many features that allows you to involve all participants and create diversity in your workshop methods:

Break-out session feature: This function lets you team up your participants into pairs or small groups. This way, all participants get to speak and there is room for some topics to be discussed more in-depth by breakout groups. Smaller groups often also provider a safer environment for participants to speak to difficult topics, something that many of us find hard in a large group.
Survey feature: Use the survey function to get a sense of where a group stands with respect of an issue or for decision making.
Video function: This is an obvious one, and yet I find that too often it’s still not used. It’s much more fun to speak to people you can actually see!

Secondly, strong facilitation is crucial for ensuring that a meeting or workshop covers all critical points and leads to the necessary decisions.

A simple and to-the-point PowerPoint presentation orients your participants around what you have planned and where you are at. Important slides are: (1) an agenda, (2) clearly stated objectives (“What needs to be achieved or decided during this meeting?”), and (3) well formulated instructions or questions for the group (during break-out sessions, instructions should in addition be typed into the chat window).
Be a stringent timekeeper and stick to the time frame you’ve set. If you notice that certain issues need more time to be discussed, intervene in order to dedicate separate meeting time for this point. Time-limit break-out sessions, which will ensure that all participants will automatically rejoin the larger group at the same time.
Establish norms that encourage all participants to contribute. For example: Each person may speak twice during the large group session. You may post additional remarks or questions into the chat window.
Use ice breakers, check-ins and check-outs to encourage everyone to speak.

Thirdly, from a participant’s perspective: Give virtual gatherings a chance – and seize the opportunity to ditch bad habits and default behaviors.

Take the plunge get started with your virtual meetings and workshops! Be aware that it may take a few tries to iron out any bugs.
In virtual meetings and workshops, we may be prone to falling into default behaviors. Try to proactively counteract this tendency: If you’re the kind of person who is shy about speaking up: Speak up at least once! And do take advantage of features that make it easier for you to engage, such as the chat function. If you’re the kind of person who tends to speak (too) much: Keep it brief and get to the point. Allow for others to speak. Ask people who haven’t spoken yet for their opinion. And if you’re the kind of person who is easy distracted (and that’s most of us!): Turn off your email program and browser beforehand and keep your mobile phone out of reach.

All the best for your virtual experiments! What are your strategies, experiences and no-gos for virtual meetings and workshops?