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The skills of managing team meetings are fundamental to productive teamwork and usually easy to learn and simple to adopt. The way to a well-facilitated meeting that promotes open communication, creativity, and consensus-building among its members is the same as the answer to the question of how one gets to Carnegie Hall: 'Practice, practice, practice!' What is a virtual meeting? A virtual meeting is an event that brings people together via the internet or a digital network, usually to achieve a shared objective. A well organized virtual meeting allows people to collaborate and share information in real-time without the need of being in the same physical location. It all began when I read The Morning Meeting Book a few years ago. I have since changed and adapted the morning meeting routine so that it works for my classroom. In this post, I'm going to talk about the four parts of our morning meeting. I teach 3rd grade but the ideas in this post could be used or adapted for 2nd-5th grade. Weekly meetings are scheduled get-togethers that a team or group has every week at a designated time. These weekly meetings are important because they tend to address action items, roadblocks, and questions for the upcoming weeks or barriers from last week. Regular meetings help team members progress with their weekly work. Weekly meetings barriers.

In many of the workshops I’ve been facilitating based on the Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout, nonprofits are recognizing that offering some workplace flexibility to employees is not only an attractive benefit but also can increase productivity and help prevent burnout. Many nonprofits allow staff to work remotely one day a week. Workplace flexibility creates a need for better skills in facilitating virtual meetings and hybrid meetings where some participants are in the room, and others participate are using audio-only or video conferencing platforms.

However, there are many challenges to running effective virtual or hybrid meetings. Virtual meetings that are not well implemented can mean a loss of productivity or create a collaborative overload. Aside from technical issues, the biggest problem is engagement. As Hasan Osman points out in his Pyramid of Communication, as you move to virtual modes of collaboration and communication, group cohesion and intimacy decreases. This makes it hard for people to fully engage with each other.

Here are some best practices for virtual meetings to get past the pain.

1. Co-create your team’s rules of engagement or virtual meeting norms

Rules of meeting engagement or “meeting norms” are stated standards that refer to processes, preparation, and communication practices that can apply to any meeting. Virtual meetings may have some specific norms, such as:

How to Prepare for Your Online Meeting Following virtual meeting tips can make your meeting a success. (Image source: Envato Elements) Here are some more useful tips on how to conduct an online meeting: 1. Make Sure It Needs to Be a Meeting. Would your online meeting work better as an email? If so, send an email, and skip the meeting altogether.

We will use the technology that most accessible to everyone on our team.
Test your technology before the meeting, and resolve any technical issues.
Use a phone line with audio clarity and stability.
Do not multi-task (do other work) during the meeting.
Follow an organized line-up to ensure each person has a chance to respond.
Find a quiet space to participate.
Use the mute button at your site to prevent transmitting background noise.
Speak up to get attention if you have something to say.
Turn on your video whenever possible, and be camera-ready.

Meeting norms should be shared with your agenda at the top of your meeting, used to reinforce different behaviors, help you improve your virtual meeting process, and should be a shortlist of no more than six. Meeting norms should be co-created and discussed with your team because for them to work, everyone has to own them.

A thirty-minute facilitated process can be used to discuss and create a draft for your meeting norms. Alternately, you can use a process called Gifts and Hooks where participants share what gifts they can bring to create an engaging meeting and what they need to be engaged.

Online Meeting Toolseffective Curriculum Ideas

2. Remember that virtual meeting design is more than agenda planning

While agenda planning covers what topics will be discussed for how long and by whom, virtual meeting design requires more designing. You need to think through purpose, roles, meeting norms, materials, facilitator agenda (especially if you are using online tools to do activities like brainstorming), technical, scheduling, and communication.

If you want to get better engagement, identify different people to assume different roles on a rotating basis. Roles may include:

Facilitator: Designs and facilitates meeting
Notetaker: Takes action notes/takeaways and emails them to everyone right after meeting
Technical support: Helps with technical troubleshooting
Bridge moderator: Someone who can assist remote participants in a face-to-face meeting or those unable to use a video conference platform or facilitates in the chat
Timekeeper: Keeps time

Some teams appoint a “Yoda” to add some levity and increase human connection. A Yoda is a person who mentions the elephant in the room or calls it out when meeting norms are not being followed.

Internet account. For more on designing your virtual meeting, read this helpful resource from Nancy White and colleagues.

3. Avoid technical and time-zone scheduling snafus

It isn’t a matter of whether or not technical problems will happen—expect them to happen and have a Plan B or a way to avoid falling into the pit of technical despair where the meeting gets derailed because of one person’s technical issue or you experimenting with a new tool, and it doesn’t work as planned. First, make sure everyone troubleshoots their technical issues before the meeting, if possible. Many platforms have a technical testing page and good tech support; include those links ahead of your meeting. And, if not, here’s a great infographic of common virtual meeting technical issues and fixes.

My secret is to write out a step-by-step facilitator agenda if using a new technical tool and rehearse it. And, always have a plan B. For example, if your platform drops callers, be a little flexible with the agenda. If someone is supposed to share their screen and is having a technical problem, make sure people have copies of the document. As the facilitator, you should also have a copy so you can share your own screen if needed.

Many virtual meetings require working across time zones; my best tips and tools are in this recent post.

4. Always do a virtual icebreaker or check-in

A great meeting or training starts with a great icebreaker. Icebreakers are discussion questions or activities used to help participants relax and ease people into a group meeting or learning situation. It is important to build in time for an icebreaker because it can create a positive group atmosphere, break down social barriers, motivate, help people think about the topic, and get people to know and trust one another. Almost any icebreaker you do in a face-to-face meeting can also be done virtually.<

Online Meeting Toolseffective Curriculum Ideas