In these changing times, we all know that to lead successful virtual meetings, we might need to adopt new technology.  However, it’s not enough to just adopt the technology.

If you want to engage effectively and encourage collaboration and teamwork, both you and your team will also need to adopt a new set of behaviours.

So, what are the key things you can do help identify and develop those new behaviours?

It is sensible to share the agenda ahead of time, so that everyone can prepare their thoughts before the actual meeting.

This provides you with three advantages:

• Attendees won’t spend precious meeting time thinking about ideas.
• They can be more focused on how they interact with their colleagues rather than processing information. This will help the connectivity between attendees.
• For some, contributing in a virtual setting can be challenging. Giving them more time to prepare may help relieve some of the anxiety and allow them to connect and contribute more successfully.

Make sure that everyone introduces themselves at the beginning of the meeting. If cameras are on, this will help with the introductions.

If the team know each other well, introductions may not be needed, but you should acknowledge who is on the call.

This is particularly important if your technology doesn’t allow you to see everyone at the same time, or if some people have dialled in by phone.  This will help attendees on the call to connect and interact more effectively.

Agree that before speaking, attendees will introduce themselves.  This is especially important if some participants are not visible to everyone else.  The simple rule of ‘identify yourself before you start speaking’, can turn a haphazard meeting into a smooth, free flowing conversation.

An introduction can serve as a buffer between the previous person speaking and the sometimes-awkward delays of remote meetings.  It also allows for others to quickly identify who the voice belongs to.

As the leader of the meeting, keep a note of who has spoken and ask nonparticipants for their view.

It can be difficult to maintain concentration and energy levels during virtual meetings.

Give people things to do during the meeting by allocating roles. This helps to involve participants and maintain energy levels and engagement.

Split the roles between attendees, facilitator, timekeeper, scribe/notetaker, chat monitor.

You can agree these at the beginning of the meeting or pre-agree at the previous meeting if it is a regular rolling meeting.

In face-to-face meetings, command and control sometimes still works. The leader can issue instructions and direct the meeting from a position of power.

It rarely works virtually, as it is difficult to control people when they are not in the same location.

If you attempt to take a directive and controlling style during the meeting, you will switch off your audience and they will no longer be mentally present.  This is when they turn to their email or other tasks.

When leading virtual meetings, allocate and share roles to help to avoid this situation.  Anyone leading the meeting must take on the role of a facilitator to draw people into the conversation and foster collaboration.

Research shows that on average we are only able to concentrate effectively for about 40 minutes at a time, even in a face to face context.

In addition, most of us would recognise that we seem to find virtual meetings more tiring.  This is because virtual meetings increase our cognitive load.

With virtual meetings, it’s difficult to spot when attendees are getting tired or the energy drops.

Try to keep your virtual meetings to less than an hour where you can and build in regular breaks.  Every 1 1/4 hours you should build in a 10-minute break.

It can be difficult to stay engaged in a virtual meeting. This is especially the case if the meeting consists purely of a group of individuals taking turns to talk or listen to the same person.

If you want to engage your team, keep energy levels high and encourage maximum contribution then you should introduce more interesting and creative ways to share ideas, views and contributions.

In a face-to-face meeting we do this by introducing flip chart activities, smaller break out group discussions, voting and energizers.

With the myriad of technology available to us now, it is possible to replicate all of these activities when you’re leading virtual meetings.

See Mentimeter for how to share whiteboard conversations. Apps such as Opinai by Vevox or slido allow voting and quizzes and word clouds.  The more advanced versions of zoom and Microsoft Teams allows the use of break out rooms either preassigned or randomly assigned amongst many of the other features that can enhance your virtual meeting or workshop.

There is no doubt that virtual meetings can be game-changing for business.  And as the ‘game’ changes, you as the person responsible for leading virtual meetings, can implement these simple behaviour changes to adapt yourself and your team to our changing world.