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Running effective virtual meetings

Conducting virtual meetings have a number of advantages including being able to get people together remotely that are often very difficult to get in the same room. However running a virtual meeting requires different considerations than face-to-face, such as more attention to details and overcoming technical and interpersonal challenges posed by not having participants in the same room. This page contains some guidance, tips and best practice for running rewarding and productive virtual team meetings.

Preparation

A successful virtual meeting involves good planning. What you do before the meeting is as important as what you do during the meeting.
Have a clear agenda to set out what topics will be covered, the desired outcome and expectations for input on each item. This ensures people keep focussed, on-topic and engaged.
Design the meeting with a common visual focus, such as PowerPoint slides, whiteboard-function or screen sharing to help focus people’s attention.
Plan opportunities to engage all attendees so they don’t feel forgotten or succumb to multi-tasking (e.g. being distracted by emails coming in!) Review your agenda and which items would benefit from input from the group.
Tools such as polls and whiteboards in Zoom can be excellent for encouraging participation.
Send out materials ahead of time to allow participants to prepare.

Technology

Make sure you choose the right communication technology for your meeting based on what is required from your agenda. E.g. will you be required to do real time editing or collective brainstorming? Make sure all participants have access to the tools selected and are equipped and prepared to use them.
Check everyone’s functionality is working before you start the meeting, for example can everyone hear you / see you, are the materials you are sharing clear when you present your screen?
Do a dry run if needed to check everything you have planned for the meeting works.

Agree ways of working

Ensure all participants are clear on their responsibilities in the meeting by discussing and agreeing virtual meeting protocols.
Discuss the importance of responding to meeting invitations and arriving early to check technology is working
Agree the use of the mute function to limit background noise, and discuss how to manage distractions that may occur at home.
Always do introductions at the start of the meeting unless you are completely sure all participants know each other. If using Zoom ensure all participants have their name visible to aid with discussions
Set expectations up front about attention required at the meeting, and to limit multi-tasking where possible

Follow-up

As in regular face-face meetings, follow up after virtual meetings is very important.
Send follow-up notes from the meeting as soon as possible, which includes a clear list of assigned actions.
Reach out to those who couldn’t make the meeting to update them on what was discussed and the outputs.
Encourage feedback from participants on how they found the meeting, and if they have any suggestions or comments to improve future meetings.

Additional links and resources

Leading virtual meetings: LinkedIn Learning. If you do not have access to LinkedIn Learning already, request access via the Training Catalogue.

Top ten tips for online meeting: CIPD PDF

Minutes meetings and agendas playlist StaffLearning and Development Toolkit